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THE ELEMENTS 






GENERAL METHOD 



BASED OX THE PRINCIPLES OF 
HEEBAKT 



BY 



CHARLES A. McMURRY, Ph.D. 



Ml 

[IN< 

4^ 



BLOOMINGTON, ILL. : 

Public-School Publishing Company. 
1893. 



Copyright, 1893. 
By C. a. MfMuRRY, Normal, 111. 



TRESS OF 

PANTAGRAPH PKINTING AND STATIONERY CO. 

BLOOMINGTON, ILL. 



PREFACE. 



THE Herbart school of Pedagogy has created much 
stir in Germany in the last thirty years. It has 
developed a large number of vigorous writers on 
all phases of education and psychology, and numbers a 
thousand or more positive disciples among the energetic 
teachers of Germany. 

Those American teachers and students who have come 
in contact with the ideas of this school have been greatly 
stimulated. 

In such a miscellaneous and many-sided thing as prac- 
tical education it is deeply gratifying to find a clear and 
definite leading purpose that prevails throughout and a 
set of mutually related and supporting principles, which 
in practice contribute to the realization of this purpose. 

The following chapters can not be regarded as a full, 
exact and painfully scientific account of Herbartian ideas, 
but as a simple explanation of their leading principles in 
their relations to each other and in their application to 
our own school problems. 

It gives me pleasure to acknowledge the friendly en- 
couragement of Dr. Wilhelm Rein, Professor of Pedagogy 
at the University of Jena. It is the author's judgment 
that his lectures, practice-school, and Seminar furnish the 



4 PREFACE. 

best opportunity for the study of common-school work 
both theoretically and practically. 

"Die acht Schuljahren," of Dr. Rein, an extensive 
work covering the eight grades of the public school, are 
a rich fund of materials from which I have freely drawn. 

In the last chapter extensive extracts from Rein's 
"Das erste Schuljahr" and Wiget's "Die formalen Stu- 
phen des Unterrichts" have been incorporated. 

Not-mal, Ulinois, July 11, 1892. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE CHIEF AIM OF EDUCATION. 

What is the central purpose of education? If we 
include under this term all the things commonly assigned 
to it, its many phases as represented by the great variety 
of teachers and pupils, the many branches of knowledge 
and the various and even conflicting methods in bringing 
up children, it is difficult to find a definition sufficiently 
broad and definite to compass its meaning. In fact we 
shall not attempt in the beginning to make a definition. 
We are in search not so much of a comprehensive defini- 
tion as of a central truth, a key to the situation, an aim 
that will simplify and brighten all the work of teachers. 
Keeping in view the end from the beginning, we need a 
central organizing principle which shall dictate for teacher 
and pupil the highway over which they shall travel to- 
gether. 

We will assume at least that education means the 
whole bringing up of a child from infancy to maturity, 
not simply his school training. The reason for this 
assumption is that home, school, companions, environment 
and natural endowment, working through a series of 
years, produce a character which is a unit as the result- 
ant of these different influences and growths. Again we 
are compelled to assume that this aim, whatever it is, 
is the same for all. 

Now what will the average man, picked up at random, 
say to our question? What is the chief end in the edu- 
cation of your son? A farmer wishes his boy to read, 



6 GENERAL METHOD. 

write and cipher so as to meet successfully the needs of 
a farmer's life. The merchant in town desires that his 
boy get a wider reach of knowledge and experience so as 
to succeed in a livelier sort of business competition. A 
university professor would lay out a liberal course of 
training for his son so as to prepare him for intellectual 
pursuits among scholars and people of culture. This 
utilitarian view, which points to success in life in the ordi- 
nary sense, is the prevailing one. We could probably 
sum up the wishes of a great majority of the common 
people by saying, "They desire to give their children 
through education a better chance in life than they them- 
selves have had. " Yet even these people, if pressed to 
give reasons, would admit that the purely utilitarian 
view is a low one and that there is something better for 
every boy and girl than the mere ability to make a suc- 
cessful living. 

Turn for a moment to the great systems of education 
which have held their own for centuries and examine 
their aims. The Jesuits, the Humanists and the Natural 
Scientists. They all claimed to be liberal, cultivating 
and preparatory to great things, yet we only need to 
quote from the histories of education to show their nar- 
rowness and incompleteness. The training of the Jesuits 
was linguistic and rhetorical, and almost entirely apart 
from our present notion of human development. The 
Humanists or Classicists, who for so many centuries con- 
stituted the educational elite, belonged to the past with 
its glories. Though standing in the present they were 
almost blind to the great problems and opportunities it 
offered. They stood in bold contrast to the growth of 
the modern spirit in history, literature arid natural sci- 
ence. But in spite of their predominating influence over 



THE CHIEF AIM. 7 

education for centuries there has never been the shadow 
of a chance for making the classics of antiquity the 
basis of common, popular education. The modern school 
of Natural Scientists is just as one-sided as the Human- 
ists in supposing that human nature is narrow enough to 
be compressed within the bonds of natural science 
studies. 

But the systems of education in vogue have always 
lagged behind the clear views of educational reformers. 
Two hundred fifty years ago Comenius projected a plan 
of education for every boy and girl of the common peo- 
ple. His aim was to teach all men all things from the 
highest truths of religion to the commonest things of 
daily experience. Being a man of simple and profound 
religious faith, religion and morality were at the founda- 
tion of his system. But even the principles of intellec- 
tual training so clearly advocated by Comenius have not 
yet found a ready hearing among teachers, to say noth- 
ing of his great moral-religious purpose. ^ Among later 
writers Locke, Rousseau and Pestalozzi have set up ideals 
of education that have had much influence. But Locke's 
"gentleman" can never be the ideal of all because it is 
intrinsically aristocratic and education has become with 
us broadly democratic. After all, Locke's "gentleman" 
is a noble ideal and should powerfully impress teachers. 
The perfect human animal that Rousseau dreamed of in 
the Emile, is best illustrated in the noble savage, but we 
are not in danger of adopting this ideal. In spite of his 
merits the noblest savage falls short in a hundred ways. 
Yet it is important in education to perfect the animal 
development in every child. Pestalozzi touched the 
hearts of even the weakest and morally frailest children, 
and tried to make intellectual culture contribute to heart 



8 GENERAL METHOD. 

culture, or rather to combine the two in strong moral 
characters. He came close upon the highest aim of edu- 
cation and was able to illustrate his doctrine in practice. 
The educational reformers have gone far ahead of the 
schoolmasters in setting up a high aim in education. 

Let us examine a few well-known definitions of edu- 
cation by great thinkers, and try to discover a central 
idea. 

"The purpose of education is to give to the body and 
to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which 
they are capable." — Plato. 

"Education includes whatever we do for ourselves 
and whatever is done for us by others for the express 
purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of our 
nature." — John Stuart Mill 

"Education is the preparation for complete living." — 
Herbert Spencer. 

"Education is the harmonious and equable evolution 
of the human faculties by a method based upon the 
nature of the mind for developing all the faculties of the 
soul, for stirring up and nourishing all the principles of 
life, while shunning all one-sided culture and taking 
account of the sentiments upon which the strength and 
worth of men depend." — Stein. 

"Education is the sum of the reflective efforts by 
which we aid nature in the development of the physical, 
intellectual and moral faculties of man in view of his per- 
fection, his happiness, and his social destination." — Corn- 
pay re. 

These attempts to bring the task of education into a 
comprehensive scientific formula are of interest and are 
yet disappointing. They agree in giving great breadth 
to education. But in the attempt to be comprehensive. 



THE CHIEF AIM. 9 

to omit nothing, they fail to specify that wherein the 
true worth of man consists; they fail to bring out into 
relief the highest aim as an organizing idea in its compli- 
cated work. 

We desire therefore to approach nearer to this prob- 
lem. What is the highest aim of education? 

We will do so by an inquiry into the aims and tenden- 
cies of our public schools. To an outward observer the 
schools of to-day confine their attention almost exclu- 
sively to intellectual training, to the mental discipline 
and power that come from a varied and vigorous exercise 
of the faculties. The great majority of good school- 
masters stand squarely upon this platform. But they 
are none the less deeply conscious that this is not the 
highest aim of education. We scarcely need to be told 
that a person may be fully equipped with the best that 
this style of education can give, and still remain a crimi- 
nal. A good and wise parent will inevitably seek for a 
better result in his child than mere intellectual ability 
and power. All good schoolmasters know that behind 
school studies and cares is the still greater task of devel- 
oping manly and womanly character. Perhaps, how- 
ever, this is too high and sacred a thing to formulate. 
Perhaps in the attempt to reduce it to a scientific form 
we^ should lose its spirit. Admitting that strong moral 
character is the noblest result of right training, is it not 
still incidental to the regular school work? Perhaps it 
lies in the teacher and in his manner of treating subjects 
and not in the subject-matter itself. 

This is exactly the point at which we wish to apply 
the lever and to lift into prominence' the moral character- 
building aim a§ the central one in education. This aim 
should be like a loadstone, attracting and subordinating 



to GENERAL METHOD. 

all other purposes to itself. It should dominate in the 
choice, arrangement and method of studies. Let us 
examine more carefully the convictions upon which the 
moral aim rests. Every wise and benevolent parent 
knows that the first and last question to ask and answer 
regarding a child is "What are his moral quality and 
strength? " Now, who is better able to judge of the true 
aim than thoughtful and solicitous parents? In the sec- 
ond place, it is inconceivable that a conscientious teacher 
should close his eyes to all except the intellectual train- 
ing of his pupils. It is as natural for him to touch and 
awaken the moral qualities as it is for birds to sing. 
Again, the state is more concerned to see the growth of 
just and virtuous citizens than in seeing the prosperity 
of scholars, inventors and merchants. It is also con- 
cerned with the success of the latter, but chiefly when 
their knowledge, skill and wealth are equaled by their 
virtues. Our country may have vast resources and great 
opportunities, but everything in the end depends upon 
the moral quality of its men and women. Undermine 
and corrupt this and we all know that there is nothing 
to hope for. The perpetual enticement and blandishment 
of worldly success so universal in our time can not move 
us if we found one theory and practice upon the central 
doctrine of moral education. Education, therefore, in 
its popular, untrammeled, moral sense is the greatest 
concern of society. 

In projecting a general plan of popular education we 
are beholden to the prejudices of no man nor class of 
men. Not even the traditional prejudices of the great 
body of teachers should stand in the way of setting up 
the noblest ideal of education. Educational thinkers are 
in duty bound to free themselves from utilitarian notions 



THE CHIEF ATM. 11 

and narrowness, and to. adopt the best platform that 
children by natural birthright can stand upon. They are 
called upon to find the best and to apply it to as many as 
possible. Let it be remembered that each child has a 
complete growth before him. His own possibilities and 
not the attainments of his parents and elders are the 
things to consider. 

Shall we seek to avoid responsibility for the moral 
aim by throwing it upon the family and the church? 
But the more we probe into educational problems the 
more we shall find the essential unity of all educational 
forces. If asked to define the relation of the school to 
the home we shall quickly see that they are one in spirit 
and leading purpose, that instead of being separated 
they should be brought closer together. They are the 
two sides of the shield. 

In conclusion, therefore, shall we make moral charac-'^ 
ter the clear and conscious aim of school education, and 
then subordinate school studies and discipline, mental 
training and conduct to this aim? It will be a great 
stimulus to thousands of teachers to discover that this is 
the real purpose of school work, and that there are 
abundant means not yet utilized of realizing it. Having 
once firmly grasped this idea, they will find that there is 
no other having half its potency. It will put a substan- 
tial foundation under educational labors, both theoretical 
and practical, which will make them the noblest of enter- 
prises. 

Is it reasonable to suppose that the rank and file of 
our teachers will realize the importance of this aim in 
teaching so long as it has no recognition in our public 
system of instruction? The moral element is largely 
present among educators as an instinct^ but it ought to 



12 GENERAL METHOD. 

be evolved into a clear 2->'^(^rpose with definite means of 
accomplishment. It is an open secret in fact, that while 
our public instruction is ostensibly secular, having noth- 
ing to do directly with religion or morals, there is noth- 
ing about which good teachers are more thoughtful and 
anxious than about the means of moral influence. Occa- 
sionally some one from the outside attacks our public 
schools as without morals and godless, but there is no 
lack of stauncti defenders on moral grounds. Theoreti- 
cally and even practically, to a considerable extent, we 
are all agreed upon the great value of moral education. 
But there is a striking inconsistency in our whole posi- 
tion on the school problem. While the supreme value of 
the moral aim will be generally admitted, it has no open 
recognition in our school course, either as a principal or 
as a subordinate aim of instruction. Moral education is 
not germane to the avowed purposes of the public school. 
If it gets in at all it is by the back door. It is inci- 
dental, not primary. 

How to establish the moral aim in the center of the 
school course, how to subordinate and realize the other 
educational aims while keeping this chiefly in view, how 
to make instruction and school discipline contribute 
unitedly to the formation of vigorous moral character, 
and how to unite home, school and other life experiences 
of a child in perfecting the one great aim of education, 
are some of the problems whose solution will be sought 
in the following chapters. 

It will be especially our purpose to show how school 
instruction can be brought into the direct service of char- 
acter-building. This is the point upon which most teach- 
ers are skeptical. In one whole set of school studies, 
and that the most important (reading, literature and his- 



THE CHIEF AIM. 13 

tory), there is opportunity through all the grades for a 
vivid and direct cultivation of moral ideas and convic- 
tions. The second great series of studies, the natural 
sciences, come in to support the moral aims, while the 
personal example and influence of the teacher, and the 
common experiences and incidents of school life and con- 
duct give abundant occasion to apply and enforce moral 
ideas. 

That the other justifiable aims of education, such as 
physical training, mental discipline, orderly habits, gen- 
tlemanly conduct, practical utility of knowledge, liberal 
culture, and the free development of individuality will 
not be weakened by placing the moral aim in th^ fore- 
front of educational motives, we are convinced. To 
some extent these questions will be discussed in the fol- 
lowing pages. 

The importance of making the leading aim of educa- 
tion clear to teachers, is great. If their conviction on 
this point is not clear they will certainly not concentrate 
their attention and efforts upon its realization. Again, 
in a business like education, where there are so many 
important and necessary results to be reached, it is very 
easy and common to put forward a subordinate aim, and 
to lift it into undue prominence, even allowing it to 
swallow up all the energies of teacher and pupils. 
Owing to this diversity of opinions among teachers as to 
the results to be reached, our public schools exhibit a 
chaos of conflicting theory and practice, and a number- 
less brood of hobby-riders. 



14 GENERAL METHOD. 



CHAPTER II. 



RELATIVE VALUE OF STUDIES. 

Having established the leading aim of education, it 
remains to inquire into the relative value of different 
studies and their adaptability to accomplish this aim. 
As measured upon this cardinal purpose what is the 
intrinsic value of each of the school studies and what 
the amount of time that should be consumed by each? 
These questions are not new. Since the time of Comenius, 
to say the least, they have seriously disturbed educators. 
But few have had the courage, industry and breadth of 
mind of a Comenius, to sound the educational waters and 
to lay out a profitable chart. In spite of Comenius' 
labors, however, and those of other educational reform- 
ers, be they never so energetic, practical progress 
toward a final answer, as registered in school courses, 
has been extremely slow. 

Herbert Spencer says: "If there needs any further 
evidence of the rude, undeveloped character of our edu- 
cation, we have it in the fact that the comparative 
worths of the different kinds of knowledge have been 
as yet scarcely even discussed, much less discussed in a 
methodic way with definite results. Not only is it that 
no standard of relative values has yet been agreed upon, 
but the existence of any such staiidard has not been con- 
ceived in any clear manner. And not only is it that the 
existence of such a standard has not been clearly con- 
ceived, but the need of it seems to have been scarcely 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 15 

even felt. Men read books on this topic and attend lect- 
ures upon that, decide that their children shall be in- 
structed in these branches and not in those; and all 
under guidance of mere custom, or liking, or prejudice, 
without ever considering the enormous importance of 
determining in some rational way what things are really 
most worth learning. * * ^ * * Men dress their 
children's minds as they do their bodies, in the prevail- 
ing fashion." 

Spencer certainly does not solve the problem. It can 
scarcely be said that any Englishman or American has 
seriously grappled with it. G-reat changes and reforms 
indeed have been started, especially within the last fifty 
years, but they have been undertaken under the pressure 
of general popular demands and have resulted in compro- 
m-ises between traditional forces and urgent popular 
needs. A fair philosophical inquiry into the relative 
merit of studies and their adaptability to nurture mental 
and moral qualities has not been made. 

The Germans have worked to a better purpose. Quite 
a number of able thinkers among them have given their 
best years to the study of this problem of relative edu- 
cational values and to a working out of its results. Her- 
bart, Ziller, Stoy and Rein have been deeply interested 
in philosophy and psychology as life long teachers of 
these subjects at the University, but in their practice 
schools in the same place they also stood daily face to 
face with the primary difficulties of ordinary teaching. 
At the outset, and before laying out a course of study, 
they were compelled to meet and settle the aim of educa- 
tion and the problem of relative values. Having an- 
swered these questions to their own satisfaction, they 
proceeded to work out in detail a common school course. 



16 GENERAL METHOD. 

The Herbart school of teachers has presumed to call its 
interpretation of educational ideas "scientific pedagogy," 
a somewhat pretentious name in view of the fact that 
many leading educators in Germany, England and else- 
where deny the existence of such a science. The exposi- 
tion of principles that follows is chiefly derived from 
them. 

With us the present time is favorable ' to a rational 
inquiry into relative educational values and to a thor- 
ough-going application of the results to school courses 
and methods. 

In the first place the old classical monopoly is finally 
and completely broken, at least so far as the common 
school is concerned. It ruled education for several centu- 
ries, but now even its methods of discipline are losing 
their antique hold. The natural sciences, modern his- 
tory and literature have assumed an equal place with 
the old classical studies in college courses. Freed from 
old traditions and prejudice our common school is now 
grounded in the vernacular, in the national history and 
literature, and in home geography and natural science. 
Its roots go deep into native soil. Secondly^ the door of 
the common school has been thrown open to the new 
studies and they have entered in a troop. History, 
drawing, natural science, modern literature, and physical 
culture have been added to the old reading, writing and 
arithmetic. The common school was never so untram- 
meled. It is free to absorb into its course the select 
materials of the best studies. Teachers really enjoy 
more freedom in selecting and arranging subjects and in 
introducing new thiugs, than they know how to make 
use of. There is no one in high authority to check the 
reform spirit and even local boards are often among the 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 17 

advocates of change. In the third place^ by multiplying 
studies, the common school course has grown more com- 
plex and heterogeneous. The old reading, writing, arith- 
metic and grammar could not be shelved for the sake of 
the new studies and the same amount of time must be 
divided now among many branches. It is not to be won- 
dered at if all the studies are treated in a shallow and 
fragmentary way. Some of the new studies, especially, 
are not well taught. There is less of unity in higher 
education now than there was before the classical studies 
lost their supremacy. Our common school course has 
become a batch of miscellanies.' We are iu danger of 
overloading pupils, as well as of making a superficial 
hodge-podge of all branches. There is imperative need 
for sifting the studies according to their value, as well as 
for bringing them into right connexion and dependence 
upon one another. Fourthly, since we are in the midst 
of such a breaking-up period, we need to take our bear- 
ings. In order to avoid mistakes and excesses there is a 
call for deep, impartial and many-sided thinking on edu- 
cational problems. Supposing that we know what the 
controlling aim of education is, we are next led to inquire 
about and to determine the relative value of studies as 
tributary to this aim. 

It is not however our purpose to give an original 
solution to this problem and to those which follow it. 
We must decline to attempt a philosophical inquiry into 
fundamental principles and their origin. Ours is the 
humbler task of explaining and applying principles al- 
ready worked out by others, that is, to give the results 
of Herbartian pedagogy as applied to our schools. 

Instead of discussing the many branches of study 
one after another, it will be well to make a broad divi- 



18 GENERAL METHOD. 

sion of them into three classes and observe the marked 
features and value of each. First, history^ including the 
subject matter of reading, history'', story and other parts 
of literature. Second, the natural sciences. Third, the 

formal studies, grammar, writing, much of arithmetic 
and the symbols used in reading. 

The first two open up the great fields of real knowl- 
edge and experience, the world of man and of external 
nature, the two great reservoirs of interesting facts. 
We will first examine these two fields and consider their 
value as constituent parts of the school course. 

"^^ History, in our present sense, includes what we usu- 
ally understand by it, as U. S. history, modern and an- 
cient history, also biography, tradition, fiction as express- 
ing human life in the novel or romance, and historical 
and literary masterpieces of all sorts so far as they 
delineate man's experience and character. In a still 
broader sense history includes language as the expression 
of men's thoughts and feelings. But this is the formal 
side of history with which we are not at present con- 
cerned. History deals with men's motives and actions 
as individuals or in society, with their dispositions, hab- 
its and institutions, and with the monuments and litera- 
ture they have left. 

The relations of men to each other and to society give 
rise to morals. Whether in the life of David or of Shy- 
lock, or of the people whom they represent, the study 
of men is primarily a study of morals. It is in the hard- 
ships, struggles and mutual contact of men that motives 
and moral impulses are observed and judged. We are 
chiefly interested to know what qualities of mind and 
heart, for example, were shown by such men as Bunyan, 
William the Silent, or John Qiiincy Adams. Although 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 19 

history has many uses, its best influence is in illustrating 
and inculcating moral ideas. It will strike most teach- 
ers as a surprise to say that the chief use of history 
study is to form moral notions in children. We have not 
so regarded nor used history. It has been generally 
looked upon as a body of useful information that any 
intelligent person must possess. But there is no doubt 
that moral and religious dispositions are the best fruit- 
age and test of value in men. Important economic, 
political and social questions also rest in the end upon 
moral principles. Some of the best historical materials 
(from biography, tradition and fiction) should be absorbed 
by children in each grade as an essential part of the sub- 
stratum of moral ideas. This implies more than a collec- 
tion of historical stories in a supplementary reader for 
intermediate grades. It means that history in the broad 
sense is to be an important study in ev^ry grade and 
that it shall become a center and reservoir from which 
reading books and language lessons draw their supplies. 
These biographies, stories and historical episodes must 
be the best which cur history and classic literature can 
furnish and whatever is of like virtue in the life of other 
kindred peoples, of England, Germany, Greece, etc. 

If history in this sense can be made a strong auxil- 
iary to moral education in common schools, the whole 
body of earnest teachers will be gratified. For there is 
no theme among them of such perennial interest and 
depth of meaning as moral culture in schools. The ever- 
recurring, emphatic refrain from them is ^'■the example 
of the teacher;'' and surely there is no such means of 
instilling moral ideas as the presence and inspiration of 
a high-toned teacher. But after all he is only a guide. 
"He lures to brighter worlds and leads the way." No 



30 GENERAL METHOD. 

teacher can feel that he embodies in himself, except in a 
very imperfect way, the strong moral ideas that have 
made the history of good men worth reading. No mat- 
ter what resources he may have in his own character, the 
teacher needs to employ forces which lie outside of him- 
self, ideals toward which he struggles and toward which 
he inspires and leads others. In this sense it is a mis- 
take to center all attention upon the conduct of the 
teacher. It is better for pupil and teacher to enter into 
the companionship of common aims and ideals. When 
these inspirations and aims have gradually changed into 
tendencies and habits, a child is morally full-fledged. It 
is, indeed, high ground upon which to land a youth, or 
aid in landing him, but it is clearly in view. 

The common school age is the formative period. At 
six a child is morally immature, at fifteen the die has 
been stamped. This youthful wilderness must be crossed. 
We can't turn back. There is no other way of reaching 
the promised land. But there are rebellions and bait- 
ings and disorderly scenes. 

Isn't there a quicker and easier way? The most 
speedily constructed road across this region is a short 
treatise on morals for teacher and pupils. In this way 
it is possible to have all the virtues and faults tabulated, 
and labeled and transferred in brief space to the minds 
of the children. But no such paved road is worth any- 
thing. We have tried it a dozen times in much less 
important fields of knowledge than morals. It has been 
demonstrated, for example, in our high schools during a 
series of years that botany, chemistry, physics and 
geology cannot be properly taught by such brief scien- 
tific compendia of rules and principles. "Words, words, 
words," as Hamlet said. We cannot learn geography 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 31 

from definitions and map questions, nor morals from 
catechisms. And just as in the fields of natural science 
we are resorting perforce to plants, animals and natural 
phenomena, so in morals we turn to the deeds and lives 
of men. We must get at moral ideas without moralizing, 
and drink in moral convictions without resorting to moral 
platitudes. Educators are losing faith in words, defini- 
tions and classifications. It is getting to be a truism 
that one can't learn chemistry and zoology from books 
alone or chiefly. 

A little reflection will show that we are only demanding 
object lessons in the field of moral education, extensive, 
systematic, all-pervading object lessons, choice exper- 
iences and episodes from human life, painted in natural 
colors as shown by our best history and literature. To 
appreciate the virtues and vices, to sympathize with 
better impulses, we must travel beyond words and defi- 
nitions till we come in contact with the personal deeds 
that first give rise to them. To get the impress of kind- 
ness we must see an act of kindness and feel the glow it 
produces. When Sir Philip Sidney, wounded on the 
battle field and suffering with thirst, reached out his 
hand for the cup of water that was brought, his glance 
fell upon a dying soldier who viewed the cup with great 
desire, Sidney handed him the water with the words, 
"Thy necessity is greater than mine." No one can re- 
fuse his approval for this act. After telling the story of 
the man who went down to Jericho, and fell among 
thieves, and then of the priest, the Levite and the Samar- 
itan who passed that way, Jesus put the question to 
his critic, "Who was neighbor to him that fell among 
thieves ? " And the answer came even from unwilling 
lips, "He that showed mercy." Such moral judgments 
—2 



22 GENERAL METHOD. 

as these spring up naturally and surely when we under- 
stand clearly the circumstances under which an act was 
performed. On the other hand it is natural to condemn 
wro7ig deeds when presented clearly and objectively in 
the action of another. Nero caused Christians to be 
falsely accused and then to be condemned to the claws 
of wild beasts in the arena. When cruelty is practiced 
against the innocent and helpless we condemn the act. 
But later the judgment must react upon our own con- 
duct. When Columbus was thrown into chains instead 
of being rewarded, we condemn the Spaniards. In such 
cases it is possible to observe how moral judgments orig- 
incite and by repetition grow into convictions. In the 
same way the real world of persons about us, the acts of 
parents, companions and teachers are powerful in giving 
a good or bad tone to our sentiments, because, as living 
object lessons, their impress is directly and constantly 
upon us. 

But a good share of the influences that are thrown 
around an ordinary child need to be counteracted. It 
can be done to a considerable extent by mstruction. 
Many of the interesting characters of history are better 
company for us and for children than our neighbors and 
contemporaries. For the purposes of moral example and 
inspiration we may select as companions the best 
persons in history, provided we know how to select for 
ourselves and others. Their acts are personal, biograph- 
ical and interesting and appeal at once to children as 
well as to their elders. The fitting way then to cultivate 
moral judgments, that is, to form just ideas of right and 
wrong, of virtues and vices, is by a regular and sys- 
tematic presentation of persons illustrating noble and 
ignoble acts. Habits of judgment and of conduct may 
be thus formed and strong moral convictions established. 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 23 

If this is the proper origin and culture of moral ideas 
we desire to know how to utilize it in the common school 
course. It can only be done by an extensive use of his- 
torical and literary materials in all grades with the con- 
scious purpose of shaping moral ideas and character. 
That the school has such influence at its disposal can not 
be reasonably denied by any one who believes that the 
family or the church can affect the moral character of 
their children. It may be objected that the school thus 
takes up the proper work of the home, when it ought to 
be occupied with other things. Would that the homes 
were all good! But even if they were the teacher could 
not fold his arms over a responsibility removed. As soon 
as a boy enters school, if not sooner, he begins, in some 
sense, to outgrow the home. New influences and inter- 
ests find a lodgment in his affections. Companions, the 
wider range of his acquaintances, studies and ambitions 
share now with the home. John Locke objected radi- 
cally to English Public Schools on this account. But 
even if we desired, we could not resort to private tutors 
as Locke did. The child is growing and changing. Who 
shall organize unity out of this maze of thoughts, inter- 
ests and influences, casting out the useless and bad, com- 
bining and strengthening the good? The more service the 
home renders the better. The child's range of thought 
and ambition is expanding, who has the best survey of 
the field? In many cases at least, the teacher, especially 
where parents lack the culture and the children need a 
guide. Who spends six hours a day directing these cur- 
rents of thought and interest ? We are not disposed to 
underestimate the magnitude of the task here laid upon 
the teacher. The rights and duties of the home are not 
put in question. Indeed the spirit of this kind of teach- 



24 GENERAL METHOD. 

ing is best illustrated in a good home. A teacher who 
has a father's anxiety in the real welfare of children will 
not forget his duty in watching their moral growth. 
The moral atmosphere of a good home will remain the 
ideal for the school. In fact Herbart's plan of education 
originated not in a school room, but in an excellent home 
in Switzerland, where he spent three years in the private 
instruction of three boys. The conscientious zeal with 
which he devoted himself to the moral and mental growth 
of these children is a model for teachers. The shaping 
of three characters was, according to his view, en- 
trusted to him. The common notion of intellectual growth 
and strength which rules in such cases was at once sub- 
ordinated to character development in the moral sense. 
Not that the two ideas are at all antagonistic but one is 
more important than the other. The selection of reading 
matter, of studies and of employments was adapted to 
each boy with a view to influencing conduct and moral 
action. 

The Herbart school adheres to this view of education, 
and has transferred its S2nrit and 7nethod to the schools. 
The Herbartians have the hardihood, in this age of moral 
skeptics, to believe not only in moral example but also in 
moral teaching. (By moral skeptics we mean those who 
believe in morals but not in moral instruction.) They 
seek first of all historical materials of the richest moral 
content, in vivid personification, upon which to nourish 
the moral spirit of children. If properly treated this 
subject matter will soon win the children by its power 
over feeling and judgment. With Crusoe the child goes 
through every hardship and success; with Abraham he 
lives in tents, seeks pastures for his flocks, and gener- 
ously marches out to the rescue of his kinsmen. He 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 35 

should not read Csesar with a slow and toilsome drag 
(parsing and construing) that w^ould render a bright boy 
stupid. If he goes with Caesar at all, he must build an 
agger^ fight battles, construct bridges and approve or 
condemn Caesar's acts. But we doubt the moral value of 
Caesar's Gallic wars. By reading Plutarch we may see 
that the Latins and Greeks, before the days of their 
degeneracy, nourished their rising youth upon the tra- 
ditions of their ancestry. This education produced a 
tough and sinewy brood of moral qualities. Their great 
men were great characters, largely because of the mother- 
milk of national tradition and family training. In Scotch, 
English and German history we are familiar with Alfred, 
Bruce, Siegfried and many other heroes of similar value 
in the training of youth. 

It will be well for us to look into our own history and 
see what sort of a moral heritage of educative materials 
it has left us. What notable examples does it furnish of 
right thought and action? Have we any home-bred food 
like this for the nourishment of our growing youth? Our 
native American history is indeed nobler in tone and more 
abundant. For moral educative purposes in the training 
of the young the history of America, from the early ex- 
plorations and settlements along the Atlantic coast, to 
the present, has scarcely a parallel in history. It was a 
race of moral heroes that led the first colonies to many of 
the early settlements. Winthrop, Penn, Williams, Ogle- 
thorpe, Raleigh and Columbus were great and simple 
characters, deeply moral and practical. For culture pur- 
poses, where can their equals be found? And where was 
given a better opportunity for the display of personal 
virtues than by the leaders of these little danger-encir- 
cled communities? The leaven of purity, piety and manly 



36 GENERAL METHOD. 

independence which they brought with them and illus- 
trated has never ceased to work powerfully among our 
people. Why not bring the children into direct contact 
with these characters in the intermediate grades, not by 
short and sketchy stories, but by full life pictures of these 
men and their surroundings? We have not been wholly 
lacking in literary artists who have worked up a part of 
these materials into a more durable and acceptable form 
for our schools. We need to make an abundant use of 
this and other history for our boys and girls, not by 
devoting a year in the upper grades to a barren outline 
of American annals, but by a proper distribution of these 
and other similar rich treasures throughout the grades of 
the common school. 

Tradition and fiction are scarcely less valuable than 
biography and history because of their vivid portrayal of 
strong and typical characters. Our own literature and 
the world's literature at large are a store-house well- 
stocked with moral educative materials, properly suited 
to children at different ages, if only sorted, selected and 
arranged. But this requires broad knowledge of our best 
literature and clear insight into child character at dif- 
ferent ages. This problem will not be solved in a day, 
nor in a life-time. 

In making a progressive series of our best historical 
and literary products, it is necessary to select those 
materials which are better adapted than anything else to 
interest, influence and mould the character of children at 
each time of life. It is now generally agreed by the best 
teachers that these selections shall be classical master- 
pieces, not in fragments but as wholes. They should be 
those classical materials that bear the stamp of genuine 
nobility. Goethe says " The best is good eriough for chil- 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 27 

dren.'' For some years past in our grammar grades we 
have been using some of the best selections of Whittier, 
Longfellow, Bryant, and others, and we are not even 
frightened by the length of such productions as Evan- 
geline, The Lady of the Lake or Julius Caesar. A simple, 
adapted version of Robinson Crusoe is used in some 
schools as a second reader. From time immemorial choice 
selections of prose and verse have formed the staple of 
our readers above the third. But generally these selec- 
tions are scrappy or fragmentary. Few of the great 
masterpieces have been used because most of them are 
supposed to be too long. Broken fragments of our choice 
literary products have been served up, but the best liter- 
ary works as wholes have never been given to the chil- 
dren in the schools. The G-reek youth were better served 
with the Iliad and Odyssea, and some of our grandfathers 
with the tales of the Old Testament. We now go still 
farther back in the child-life and make use of fairy tales 
in the first grade. But many are not yet able to realize 
that select fairy stories are genuinely classical, that they 
are as well adapted to stimulate the minds of children as 
Hamlet the minds of adults. 

The chief aim of our schools all along has not been 
an appreciation of literary masterpieces either in their 
moral or art value, but to acquire skill in reading, flu- 
ency and naturalness of expression. Our schools have 
been almost completely absorbed in the purely formal 
use of our literary materials, learning to read in the ear- 
lier grades, and learning to read with rhetopical expres- 
sion and confidence in the later ones. In the present 
argument our chief concern is not with the formal use of 
literary materials for practice in reading, but with the 
moral culture, conviction and habit of life they may fos- 



28 GENERAL METHOD. 

ter. Nor have we chiefly in view the art side of our best 
literary pieces. Appreciation of beauty in poetry and 
of strength in prose, admirable as they may be, are quite 
secondary to the main purpose. Coming in direct and 
vivid contact with manly deeds or with unselfish acts as 
personified in choice biography, history, fiction and real 
life will inspire children with thoughts that make life 
worth living. Neither formal skill in reading nor appre- 
ciation of literary art can atone for the lack of direct 
moral incentive which historical studies should give. All 
three ends should be reached. 

Many teachers are now calling for a change in the 
spirit with which the best biography and literature are 
used. They call for an improvement in the quality and 
an increase in the quantity of complete historical epi- 
sodes and of literary masterpieces. An appreciative 
reading of Ivanhoe revives the spirit of that age. The 
life of Samuel Adams is an epic that gives the youth a 
chance to live amid the stirring scenes of Boston in a 
notable time. Children are to live in thought and inter- 
est the lives of many men of other generations, as of 
Tell, Columbus, Livingstone, Lincoln, Penn, Franklin, 
Fulton. They are to partake of the experiences of the best 
typical men in the story of our own and of other countries. 

The use of the best historical and literary works as a 
means of strengthening moral motives and principles 
with children, whose minds and characters are develop- 
ing, is a high aim in itself. And it will add interest and 
life to the formal studies, such as reading, spelling, 
grammar and composition which spring out of this valu- 
able subject-matter. 

History, in the broad sense, should be the chief con- 
stituent of a child's education. That subject-matter 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 29 

which contains the essence of moral culture in generative 
form deserves to constitute the chief mental food of 
young people. The conviction of the high moral value 
of historic subjects and of their peculiar adaptability to 
children at different ages, brings us to a positive judg- 
ment as to their relative value among studies. The first 
question, preliminary to all others in the common school 
course, "What is the most important study?" is an- 
swered by putting history at the head of the list. 

Natural science takes the second place. In many 
respects it is co-ordinate with history. The object-world, 
which is so interesting, so informing, and so intimately 
interwoven with the needs, labors and progress of men, 
furnishes the second great constituent of education for 
all children. Botany, zoology and the other natural sci- 
ences, taken as a unit, constitute the field of nature 
apart from man. They furnish us an understanding of 
the varied objects and complex phenomena of nature. It 
is one of the imperative needs of all human minds, that 
have retained their childlike thoughtfulness and spirit of 
inquiry, to desire to understand nature, to classify the 
variety of objects and appearances, to trace the chain of 
causes and to search out the simple laws of nature's 
operations. The command early came to men to subdue 
the earth, and we understand better than primitive man 
that it is subdued through investigation and study. All 
the forces and bounties of nature are to be made service- 
able to us and it can only be done by understanding her 
facts and laws. The road to mastery leads through 
patient observation, experiment and study. 

But we are concerned with the educational value of 
the natural sciences. Waitz says : ' 'A correct philosophy 
of the world and of life is possible to a person only on 



30 GENERAL METHOD. 

the basis of a knowledge of one's self and of one's rela- 
tion to surrounding nature." Diesterweg says: "No 
one can afford to neglect a knowledge of nature who 
desires to get a comprehension of the world and of God 
according to human possibility, or who desires to find his 
proper relation to Him and to real things. He who 
knows nothing of human history is an ignoramus, like- 
wise he who knows nothing of natural science. To know 
nothing of either is a pure shame. Ignorance of nature 
is an unpardonable perversion." Kraepelin speaks as 
follows: "Instruction should open up to a pupil an under- 
standing of the present, and thereby furnish a basis for 
a frank and many-sided philosophy of life, resting upon 
reality. But to the present belongs the world outside of 
us. Of this present there can be no such thing as an 
understanding unless it relates not only to inter-human 
relations but also to relations of man to animal, of ani- 
mal to plant, and of organic life to inorganic life. The 
necessity of assuming a relation to our environment is 
unavoidable and this can only be done by acquainting 
ourselves with the surrounding world in every direction. 
This requirement would remain in force though man, 
like a god, were set above nature and her laws. But 
man lives, acts and dies not outside of, but within the 
circle of nature's laws. This maxim is axiomatic and 
contains the final judgment against those who claim that 
a comprehensive but unified philosophy of life is possible 
without a knowledge of nature. " Herbart says: "Here 
(in nature) lies the abode of real truth, which does not 
retreat before tests into an inaccessible past (as does his- 
tory). This genuinely empirical character distinguishes 
the natural sciences and makes their loss irretrievable. 
It is here (iti nature) that the object disentangles itself 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 31 

from all fancies aud opinions and constantly stimulates 
the spirit of observation. Here then is found an obstruc- 
tion to extravagant thinking such as the sciences them- 
selves could not better devise." Ziller says: "The 
natural sciences are necessary in education because from 
the province of nature (as well as from history) are 
derived those means and resources which are necessary 
to accomplish the purposes of the will in action. Means 
and forces are the natural conditions for the realization 
of aims. Without knowledge of and an intelligent 
power over nature it is difficult to realize that certain 
aims are possible; action cannot be successful; will effort 
based upon the firm conviction of ability, that is, judi- 
cious exercise of will, is impossible." We quote also 
from Professor Rein: "Let us observe in passing that in 
the great industrial contest between civilized nations, 
that people will suffer defeat which falls behind in the 
culture of natural science, and for this reason the motive 
of self-protection would demand natural science instruc- 
tion. In favor of this teaching the claim is further made 
that no science is so well adapted to train the mind to 
inductive thought processes as that which rests entirely 
upon induction, and that natural science study is in a 
position to resist more easily and successfully than all 
other studies, the deeply-rooted tendency in all branches 
to substitute words for ideas." Rein (das vierte Schul- 
jahr) explains further the leading ideas and standpoints 
as they have appeared historically among teachers of sci- 
ence in the common school. 

1. Natural history stories for entertainment. 

2. Utility, or the study of the things in nature that 
are directly useful or hurtful to man. 

3. Description of natural objects, training of sense- 
perception, etc. 



32 GENERAL METHOD. 

4, Analysis and determination of natural science 
specimens. 

5. System-making, or the reduction of all things in 
nature to a systematic whole, with a place for every- 
thing. 

All these are considered as valuable subsidiary aims, 
leading up to the central purpose of the study of natural 
sciences which is, ''An understanding of life and of the 
powers and of the unity which express themselves in 
nature," or as Kraepelin says: "Nature should not 
appear to man as an inextricable chaos but as a well- 
ordered mechanism, the parts fitting exactly to each 
other, controlled by unchanging laws and in perpetual 
action and production." Humboldt is further quoted: 
"Nature to the mature mind is unity in variety, unity of 
the manifold in form and combination, the content or 
sum total of natural things and natural forces as a living 
whole. The weightiest result, therefore, of deep physi- 
cal study is, by beginning with the individual, to grasp 
all that the discoveries of recent times reveal to us, to 
separate single things critically and yet not be overcome 
by the mass of details, mindful of the high destiny of 
man, to comprehend the mind of nature, which lies con- 
cealed under the mantle of phenomena." This sounds 
visionary and impracticable for children of the common 
school, especially when we know that much lower aims 
have not been successfully reached. In fact it cannot be 
said that the natural sciences have any recognized stand- 
ing in the common school course. But it is worth the 
while to inquire whether natural sciences will ever be 
taught as they should be until the best attainable aims 
become the dominant principles for guiding teachers. 
Stripped of its rhetoric the above mentioned aim, "an 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 33 

understanding of life and the unity in nature" may prove 
a practical and inspiring guide to the teacher. It may 
also bring into relation to this higher purpose all the 
other aims of science teaching. It certainly can not dis- 
pense with any of the five historically developed aims 
above described. They are in the main essential elements 
of a complete natural science course for children. 

But in addition to these the purpose of discovering 
the life and unity in nature has other equally important 
means of self-realization at its disposal. The causal rela- 
tions in nature are wonderfully stimulating to one who has 
begun to trace them out. The study of plants and ani- 
mals in their adaptation to environment, of the relation 
between organ and function, between organs, mode of 
life and environment, leads up to a general law which 
applies to all plants and animals. The law of adaptation 
is similarly developed. Also the law of growth and 
development from the simple germ to the mature life 
form. These laws and others in biology, if developed on 
concrete specimens, give much insight into the whole 
realm of nature, more stimulating by far than that based 
on scientific classifications, as orders, families and species. 
The great and simple outlines of nature's work begin to 
appear out of such laws. 

Again the study of the whole life historij of a plant or 
animal, in its relations to the inorganic world and to 
other plants and animals, is always a cross-section in the 
sciences and shows how all the natural sciences are knit 
together into a causal unity. Take the life history of a 
hickory tree. As it germinates and grows from the seed 
how it draws from the earth and air; the effect of storms, 
seasons and lightning upon it, how it later furnishes 
nuts to the squirrels and boys; its branches may be the 



34 GENERAL METHOD. 

nesting place for birds and its bark for insects. Finally 
the uses of its tough wood for man are seen. The life of 
a squirrel or of a honey-bee furnishes also a cross-section 
through all the sciences from the inorganic world up to 
man. 

In nature as it shows itself in the woods or in the 
pond, there is such a mingling and interdependence of 
the natural sciences upon each other that the book of 
nature seems totally different from books of botany, 
physics and zoology as made by men. In the forest we 
find close together trees of many kinds, shrubs, flower- 
ing plants, vines, mosses and ferns, grasses, beetles, 
worms and birds, squirrels, owls and sunshine, rocks, 
soil and springs, summer and winter, storms, frost and 
drouth. Plants depend upon the soil and upon each 
other. The birds and squirrels find their home and food 
among the trees and plants. The trees seem to grow 
together as if they needed each other's companionship. 
All the plants and animals depend upon the soil, air and 
climate, and the whole wood changes its garb and partly 
its guests with the seasons. A forest is a life society^ 
consisting of mutually dependent parts. How nature dis- 
regards our conventional distinctions between the natural 
sciences! We need no better proof than this that they 
should not be taught chiefly from books. A child might 
learn a myriad of things in the woods and gain much 
insight into nature's ways without making any clear dis- 
tinction between botany, zoology and geology. Herein 
is also the proof that text-books are needed as a guide in 
nature's labyrinth. If the frequency and intimacy of 
mutual relations are any proof of unity, the natural sci- 
ences are a unit and have a right to be called by one 
name, nature study. 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 35 

It is plain therefore that the lines tending toward 
unity in nature study are numerous and strong ; such as 
the scientific classifications of our text-books, the work- 
ing out of general laws whether in biology or physics, 
the study of life histories in vegetable and animal, and 
the observation of life societies in the close mutual rela- 
tions of the different parts or individuals. 

If a course of nature studies is begun in the first grade 
and carried systematically through all the years up to the 
eighth grade, it is not unreasonable to suppose that real 
insight into nature, based on observation taken at first 
hand, may be reached. It will involve a study of living 
plants and animals, minerals, physical apparatus and 
devices, chemical experiments, the making of collections, 
regular excursions for the observation of the neighboring 
fields, forests and streams, and the working over of these 
and other concrete experiences from all sources through 
skillful class teaching. 

The first great result to a child of such a series of 
studies is an intelligent and rational understanding of his 
home, the world, his natural environment. He will have 
a seeing eye and an appreciative mind for the thousand 
things surrounding his daily life where the ignorant toiler 
sees and understands nothing. 

A second advantage which we can only hint at, while 
incidental, is almost equally important. We have been 
considering nature chiefly as a realm by itself, apart 
from man. But the utilities of natural science in indi- 
vidual life and in society are so manifold that we accept 
many of the finest products of skill and art as if they 
were natural products — as if gold coins, silk dresses and 
fine pictures grew on the bushes and only waited to be 
picked. The thousandfold applications of natural science 



36 , GENERAL METHOD. 

to human industry and comfort deserve to be perceived 
as the result of labor and inventwe skill. Our much- 
lauded steam engines, telegraph, microscopes, sewing 
machines, reapers, iron ships and printing presses, are 
not examples of a few, but of myriads of things that 
natural science has secured. But how many children on 
leaving the common school understand the principle in- 
volved in any one of the machines mentioned, subjects of 
common talk as they are? As children leave the schools at 
fourteen or fifteen they should know and appreciate many 
such things, wherein man, by his wit and ingenious use 
of nature's forces, has triumphed over difficulties. How 
are glass and soap made? What has a knowledge of 
natural science to do with the construction of stoves, 
furnaces and lamps? How are iron, silver and copper 
ore mined and reduced? How is sugar obtained from 
maple trees, cane and beet root? How does a suction 
pump work and why? Without a knowledge of such 
applications of natural science we should be thrown back 
into barbarism. These things also, since they form such 
an important part of every child's environment, should 
be understood, but not for direct utility. 

Our knowledge of these principles and appliances con- 
stitutes in fact a good share of the foundation upon which 
our whole culture status rests. Without natural science 
we should understand neither nature nor society. 

Historically considered, the study of natural science 
is the study of man's long-continued struggle with nature 
and of his gradual triumph. It ends in insight into 
nature and into those contrivances of men by which her 
laws and forces are utilized. The whole subject of nature, 
her laws and powers, must not remain a sealed book to 
the masses of the people. Scientists, inventors and 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 37 

scholars may lead the way but they are only pioneers. 
The thousands of the children of the people are treading 
at their heels and must be initiated into the mysteries. 
But the question that confronts us at every turn is, 
What is the disciplinary value of nature study? We 
know, say the opponents, what a vigorous training in 
ancient languages and mathematics can do for a student. 
What results in this direction can the natural sciences 
tabulate? The champions of natural science point with 
pride to the great men who have been trained and devel- 
oped in such studies. For inductive thinking the natural 
sciences offer the best materials. To cultivate self-reli- 
ance there is nothing like turning a student loose in 
nature under a skilled instructor. The spirit of investi- 
gation and of accurate thinking is claimed as a peculiar 
product of nature study. It is called, par excellence, 
"the scientific spirit." The undue reverence for au- 
thority produced by literary studies is not a weakness of 
natural science pursuits. But intense interest and devo- 
tion are combined with scientific accuracy and fidelity to 
nature and her laws. 

We do not feel called upon to attempt a settlement of 
this dispute. We have already assumed that history in 
the broad sense (including languages) and natural science 
(or nature study) are the two great staples of the com- 
mon school course, and that so far as discipline is con- 
cerned one is as important as the other. But we believe 
that those educators whose first, middle and last question 
in education is, "What is the disciplinary value of a 
study?" have mistaken the primary problem of educa- 
tion. Just as in the proper training of the body, the 
strength and skill of a professional athlete are, in no sense, 
the true aim, but physical soundness, health and vigor; so 

—3 



38 (GENERAL METHOD. 

in mind culture, not extraordinary skill in mental gymnas- 
tics of the severest sort, is the essential aim, but mental 
soundness, integrity and motive. The underlying ques- 
tion in education is not, How strong or incisive is his 
mind? (This depends largely upon heredity and native 
endowment) but, What is its quality and its temper? 
If might is right, then mental strength is to be gained 
at all hazards. But if right is higher than might, then 
mental skill and power are only secondary aims. So 
long as we are dealing with fundamental aims in such a 
serious business as education, why stop short of that 
ideal which is manifestly the best? We have no contro- 
versy with the highest mental discipline and strength 
that are consistent with all-round mental soundness. 
Our better teachers are not lacking in appreciation for 
the value of what is called formal mental discipline^ but 
they do generally lack faith in the innate power of the 
best studies to arouse interest and mental life. They 
emphasize the drill more than the content and the inspira- 
tion of the author. Both in theory and in practice they 
are greatly lacking in the intellectual sympathy and 
moral power which result from bringing the minds of 
students into direct contact with the noblest products of 
God's work in history and in the object world. Here we 
can put our finger on the radical weakness of our school 
work. 

The really soul-inspiring teachers have not been 
formalists nor drill masters alone. Friedrich August 
Wolf, for example, the great German philologist, was 
probably the most inspiring teacher of classical lan- 
guages that Germany has had. But to what was his 
remarkable influence as a teacher of young men due? 
We usually think of a philologist as one who digs among 



THE RELATIVE VATATE. 39 

the roots of dead languages, who worships the forms of 
speech and the laws of grammar. Doubtless he and his 
pupils were much taken up with these things, but they 
were not the primary source of his and their interest. 
Wolf defined philology as "the knowledge of human 
nature as exhibited in antiquity." He studied with great 
avidity everything that could throw light upon the lives, 
character and language of the ancients. Their biogra- 
phies, histories, geography, climate, dress, implements, 
their sculpture, monuments, buildings, tombs. Ap- 
proaching the literature and language of the G-reeks with 
this abundant knowledge of their real surroundings and 
conditions of life, he saw the deeper, fuller significance 
of every classical author and the great literary master- 
pieces we perceived as the expression of the national life. 
He appreciated language as the wonderful medium 
through which the more wonderful life of the versatile 
Greek expressed itself. The reason he was such a great 
philologist was because he was so great a realist, a man 
who was intensely interested in the Greek people, their 
history and life. Words alone had little charm for him. 
No great teacher has been simply a word-monger. 

For the present we leave the question of discipline 
unanswered, though we are disposed to think that those 
studies which introduce children to the two great fields 
of real knowledge and which arouse a strong desire to 
solve the problems found there will also furnish the most 
valuable discipline. 

Not only the specialists in natural science, whose 
interest and enthusiasm are largely absorbed in these 
studies, but many other energetic teachers are persuaded 
that the culture value of nature studies is on a par with 
that of historical studies. But on account of the present 



40 GENERAL METHOD. 

lack of system and of clear purpose in natural science 
teachers the first great problem in this field of common 
school effort is to select the material and perfect the 
method of studying nature with children. 

Our estimate of the value of natural science for cult- 
ure and for discipline is confirmed by the opinion of edu- 
cational reformers and by the changes and progress in 
schools. An inquiry into the history of education in 
Europe and in America since the Reformation will show 
that the movement toward nature study has been accumu- 
lating momentum for more than three hundred years. In 
spite of the failure of such men as Comenius, Ratich, 
Basedow and Rousseau to secure the introduction of 
these studies in a liberal degree, in spite of the enor- 
mous influence of custom and prejudice in favor of Latin 
and other traditional studies, the natural sciences have 
made recently such surprising advances and have so pene- 
trated and transformed our modern life that we are 
simply compelled, even in the common school, to take 
heed of these great, living educational forces already at 
work. 

The universities of England and of the United States 
have been largely transformed within the last forty years 
by the introduction, on a grand scale, of modern studies, 
particularly of the natural sciences. The fitting schools, 
academies and high schools have had no choice but to fol- 
low this lead. Since the forces that produced this result 
in higher education sprang up largely outside' of our 
institutions of learning, the movement is not likely to 
cease till the common school has been changed in the 
same way. The educational question of the future is not 
whether historical or natural science or formal studies 
are to monopolize the school course, but rather how these 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 41 

three indispensable elements of every child's education 
may be best harmonized and wrought into a unit. 

"We are now in a position to give a concluding esti- 
mate upon the relative value of these three elements in 
school education. History contributes the materials 
from which motives and moral impulses spring. It cul- 
tivates and strengthens moral convictions by the use of 
inspiring examples. The character of each child should 
be drawn into harmony with the highest impulses that 
men have felt. A desire to be the author of good to 
others should be developed into a practical ruling motive. 
Natural science on the other hand supplies a knowledge 
of the ordinary means and appliances by which the pur- 
poses of life are realized. It gives us proper insight 
into the conditions of life and puts us into intelligent 
relation to our environment. Not only must a child be 
supplied with the necessaries of life but he must appreci- 
ate the needs of health and understand the economies of 
society, such as the necessity of mental and manual 
labor, the right use of the products and forces of nature, 
and the advantage of men's inventions and devices. In 
a plan of popular education these two culture elements 
should mingle (history and natural science). In the 
case of all sorts of people in society the ability to exe- 
cute high moral purposes depends largely upon a ready, 
practical insight into natural conditions. We are not 
thinking of the bread-and-butter phase of life and of the 
aid afforded by the sciences in making a living, but of 
the all-round, practical utility of natural science as a 
necessary supplement to moral training. 

One of the best tests of a system of education is the 
preparation it gives for life in a liberal sense. When a 
child, leaving school behind, developes into a citizen, 



42 GENERAL METHOD. 

what tests are applied to him? The questions submitted 
to his judgment in his relations to the family and to 
society call for a quick and varied knowledge of men, 
insight into character, and for a large amount of prac- 
tical information of natural science. He is asked to vote 
intelligently on social, political, sanitary and economic 
questions, to judge of men's motives, opinions and char- 
acter, to vote upon or perhaps to direct the management 
of poor-houses, asylums and penitentiaries, in towns to 
decide questions of drainage, police, water supply, public 
health and school administration, to make contracts for 
public buildings, and bridges, to grant licenses, and fran- 
chises, to serve on juries or as representatives of the 
people. These are not professional matters alone, they 
are the common duties of all citizens of a sound mind. 
These things each person should know how to judge, 
whether he be a blacksmith, a merchant or a house- 
keeper. In all such matters he must be not only a 
judge of others but an actor under the guidance of right 
motives and information. Again, in the bringing up of 
children, in the domestic arrangements of every home 
and in a proper care for the minds and bodies of both 
parents and children a multitude of practical problems 
from each of the great fields of real knowledge must be 
met and solved. 

A medical missionary illustrates this combination of 
historical and natural science elements. His life purpose 
is drawn from history, from the life of Christ and from 
the traditional incentives of the church. The means by 
which he is to make himself practically felt are obtained 
from his study of medicine and from the sciences upon 
which it depends. These elements form the basis of his 
influence. This illustration however savors of profes- 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 43 

sional rather than of general education, and we are con- 
cerned only with the latter. But the education of every 
child is analogous to that of the medical missionary in its 
two constituent elements. 

As a matter of fact neither history nor natural science 
occupies any such prominence in the school course as we 
have judged fitting. Much thoughtful study, experience 
in teaching and pioneer labor in partially new fields will 
be necessary in order to bring into existence such a course 
of study based upon the best materials. Many teachers 
already recognize the necessity for it and see before them 
a land of plenty as compared with the half-desert barren- 
ness revealed in our present school course. 

Two powerful convictions in the minds of those re- 
sponsible for education have contributed to produce this 
desert-like condition in children's school employments, 
and this brings us to a discussion of the over-estimation 
in which purely formal studies are held. The first article 
of faith rests upon the unshaken belief in the practical 
studies^ reading, writing and arithmetic. They are still 
looked upon as a barrier that must be scaled before the 
real work of education can begin. Learn to read, write 
and figure and then the world of knowledge as well as of 
business is at your command. But many children find 
the barrier so difficult to scale that they really never get 
into the fields of knowledge. Many of our most thorough 
going educators still firmly believe that a child can not 
learn anything worth mentioning till he has first learned 
to read. But however deeply rooted this confidence in 
the purely formal work of the early school years may be, 
it must break down as soon as means are devised for 
putting the realities of interesting knowledge before and 
underneath all the forms of expression. Let the neces- 



44 GENERAL METHOD. 

sity for expression spring from the real objects of study. 
Those children to whom the memorizing and drill upon 
forms of expression becomes tedious deserve our sym- 
pathy. There is a kind of knowledge adapted to arouse 
these dull ones to their full capacity of interest. "Or 
what man is there of you whom if his son ask bread will 
he give him a stone?" With many a child the first reader, 
the arithmetic or the grammar becomes a veritable stone. 
There is no good reason why the sole burden of work in 
early school grades should rest upon the learning of the 
pure formalities of knowledge. Children's minds are not 
adapted to an exclusive diet of this kind. The fact that 
children have good memories is no reason why their 
minds should be gorged with the dryest memory mater- 
ials. They have a healthy interest in people, whether in 
life or in story, and in the objects in nature around them. 
What is thus pre-eminently true of the primary grades is 
true to a large extent throughout all the grades of the 
common school. It seems almost curious that the more 
tender the plants the more barren and inhospitable the 
soil upon which they are expected to grow. Fortunately 
these little ones have such an exuberance of life that it is 
not easily quenched. Formal knowledge stands first in 
our common school course and real studies are allowed to 
pick up such crumbs of comfort as may chance to fall. 
We believe in formal studies and in their complete mastery 
in the common school, but they should stand in the place 
of service to real studies. How powerful the tendency 
has been and still is toward pure formal drill and word 
memory is apparent from the fact that even geography 
and history, which are not at all formal studies, but full 
to overflowing with interesting facts and laws, have been 
reduced to a dry memorizing of words, phrases and stereo- 
typed sentences. 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 45 

It is not difficult to understand why the numerous body 
of teachers, who easily drift into mechanical methods, has 
a preference for formal studies. They are comparatively 
easy and humdrum and keeps pupils busy. Real studies, 
if taught with any sort of fitness, require energy, interest 
and versatility, besides much outside work in preparing 
materials. 

The second article of faith is a still stronger one. The 
better class of energetic teachers would never have been 
won over to formal studies on purely utilitarian grounds. 
A second conviction weighs heavily in their minds. " The 
discipline of the mental faculties'' is a talisman of unusual 
potency with them. They prize arithmetic and grammar 
more for this than for any direct practical value. The 
idea of mental discipline, of training the faculties, is so 
ingrained into all our educational thinking that it crops 
out in a hundred ways and holds our courses of study in 
the beaten track of formal training with a steadiness that 
is astonishing. These friends believe that we are taking 
the back-bone out of education by making it interesting. 
The culmination of this educational doctrine is reached 
when it is said that the most valuable thing learned in 
school or out of it is to do and to do vigorously that which 
is most disagreeable. The training of the will to meet 
difficulties unffinchingly is their aim, and we can not gain- 
say it. These stalwart apostles of educational hardship 
and difficulty are in constant fear lest we shall make 
studies interesting and attractive and thus undermine 
the energy of the will. But the question at once arises: 
Does not the will always act from motives of some sort? 
And is there any motive or incentive so stimulating to 
the will as a steady and constantly increasing interest in 
studies? It is able to surmount great difficulties. 



46 GENERAL METHOD. 

We wish to assure our stalwart friends that we still 
adhere to the good old doctrine that "there is no royal 
road to learning." There is no way of putting aside the 
real difficulties that are found in every study, no way of 
grading up the valleys and tunneling through the hills so 
as to get the even monotony of a railroad track through 
the rough or mountainous parts of education. Every 
child must meet and master the difficulties of learning 
for himself. There are no palace cars with reclining chairs 
to carry him to the summit of real difficulties. The char- 
acter-developing power that lies in the mastery of hard 
tasks constitutes one of their chief merits. Accepting 
this as a fundamental truth in education, the problem 
for our solution is, how to stimulate children to encounter 
difficulties. Many children have little inclination to sac- 
rifice their ease to the cause of learning, and our dull 
methods of teaching confirm them in their indifference 
to educational incentives. Any child, who, like Hugh 
Miller or Abraham Lincoln, already possesses an insati- 
able thirst for knowledge, will allow no difficulties or 
hardships to stand in the way of progress. This original 
appetite and thirst for knowledge which the select few 
have often manifested in childhood is more valuable than 
anything the schools can give. With the majority of 
children we can certainly do nothing better than to nur- 
ture such a taste for knowledge into vigorous life. It 
will not do to assume that the average of children have 
any such original energy or momentum to lead them to 
scale the heights of even ordinary knowledge. Nor will 
it do to rely too much upon a forcing process^ that is, by 
means of threats, severity and discipline, to carry chil- 
dren against their will toward the educational goal. 



THE RELATIVE VALUE. 47 

"Be not like dumb driven cattle, 
Be a hero in the strife " 

is sound educational doctrine. 

The tiling for teachers to do is to cultivate in children 
all healthy appetites for knowledge, to set up interesting 
aims and desires at every step, to lead the approach to 
different fields of knowledge in the spirit of conquest. 

In the business world and in professional life men and 
womien work with abundant energy and will because they 
have desirable ends in view. The hireling knows no such 
o;enerous stimulus. Business life is full of irksome and 
difficult tasks but the aim in view^ carries people through 
them. We shall not eliminate the disagreeable and irk- 
some from school tasks but try to create in children such 
a spirit and ambition as will lead to greater exertions. 
To implant vigorous aims and incentives in children is the 
great privilege of the teacher. We shall some day learn 
that when a boy cracks a nut he does so because there may 
be a kernel in it, not because the shell is hard. 

In concluding the discussion of relative values we will 
summarize the results. 

History in- the liberal sense surveys the field of human 
life in its typical forms and furnishes the best illustrative 
moral materials. Nature study opens the door to the real 
world in all its beauty, variety and law. The formal 
studies constitute an indispensable part of useful and dis- 
ciplinary knowledge, but they should occupy a secondary 
place in courses of study because they deal with the /brm 
rather than with the content of the sciences. It is a 
fundamental error to place formal studies in the centre 
of the school course and to subordinate everything to 
their mastery. History and natural science, on the con- 
trary, having the richest knowledge content, constitute 



48 GENERAL METHOD. 

a natural centre for all educative efforts. They make I 

possible a strong development of will-energy because i 
their interesting materials furnish strong and legitimate 

incentives to mental activity and an enlarged field and i 

opportunity to voluntary effort in pursuit of clear and j 

attractive aims. ! 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 49 



CHAPTER 111 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 

By interest we mean the natural bent or inclination 
of the mind to find satisfaction in a subject when it is 
properly presented. It is the natural attractiveness of 
the subject that draws and holds the attention. Inter- 
est belongs to the feelings but differs from the other feel- 
ings, such as desire or longing for an object, since it is 
satisfied with the simple contemplation without asking 
for possession. The degree of interest with which differ- 
ent kinds of knowledge are received, varies greatly. 
Indeed, it is possible to acquire knowledge in such a man- 
ner as to produce dislike and disgust. A proper interest 
in a subject leads to a quiet, steady absorption of the 
mind with it, but does not imply an impetuous, passion- 
ate and one-sided devotion to one thing. Interest keeps 
the mind active and alert without undue excitement or 
partiality. 

It would be well if every study and every lesson could 
be sustained by such an interest as this. Knowledge 
would then consist not merely in a mastery of certain 
facts and formulae, coldly turned over to the memory 
machine. At every step the life experience and sympa- 
thy of a child would be interwoven with the facts 
acquired, and eventually there would be no distinction 
between home knowledge and school knowledge. All 
would be woven together and permeated by feeling. 



50 GENERAL METHOD. 

The interest we have in mind is intrinsic, native to 
the subject, and springs up naturally when the mind is 
brought face to face with something attractive. The 
things of sense in nature and the people whom we see 
and read about, have a perennial and inexhaustible attrac- 
tion for us all. It is among these objects that poets and 
artists find their materials and their inspiration. We 
just spoke of interest, not as fluctuating and variable, 
but steady and persistent. It contains also the elements 
of ease, pleasure and needed employment, that is, in 
learning something that has a proper interest, there is 
greater ease and pleasure in the acquisition, and occupa- 
tion with the object satisfies an inner need. "When 
interest has been fully developed, it must always 
combine pleasure, facility and the satisfaction of 
a need. We see again that in all exertions, power and 
pleasure are secured to interest. It does not feel the 
burden of difficulties, but often seems to sport with 
them." — Ziller. A natural interest is also awakened by 
what is strange, mysterious and even frightful, but these 
kinds of interest concern us from a speculative rather 
than pedagogical point of view. 

Severe effort and exertion are a necessary part of 
instruction, but a proper interest in the subject will help 
over many difficulties. It is not at all desirable to con- 
ceal difficulties under the guise of amusement. But by 
means of a natural interest it is possible to bring the 
mind into the most favorable state of action. In opposi- 
tion to a lively and humane treatment of subjects, a dry 
and dull routine has often been praised as the proper dis- 
cipline of the mind and will. "It was a mistake," says 
Ziller, "to find in the simple pressure of difficulties a 
source of culture, for it is the opposite of culture. It 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 51 

was a mistake to call the pressure of effort, the feeling 
of burden and pain a source of proper training, simply 
because will power and firmness of character are thus 
secured and preserved to youth. Pedagogical efforts 
looking towards a lightening and enlivening of instruc- 
tion should not have been answered by an appeal to 
severe methods, to strict, dry and dull learning, that 
made no attempt to adapt itself to the natural movement 
of the child's mind." (Ziller, Lehre vom E. U. , p. 355.) 
A proper interest aims, finally, at the highest form of 
quiet, sustained will exertion. The succession of steps, 
leading up to will energy, is interest, desire and will. 
Before attempting to realize the higher forms of will 
effort we must look to the fountains and sources out of 
which it springs. If a young man has laid up abundant 
and interesting stores of knowledge of architecture, he 
only needs an opportunity, and there is likely to be great 
will-energy in the work of planning and constructing 
buildings. But without this interest and knowledge 
there will be no effort along this line. In like manner 
children cannot be expected to show their best effort 
unless the subject is made strongly interesting from the 
start, or unless interest-awakening knowledge has already 
been stored in the mind. To make great demands upon 
the will power in early school years, is like asking for 
ripe fruits before they have had time to mature. Knowl- 
edge, feelings and will-incentives of every sort must be 
first planted in the mind, before a proper will-energy can 
be expected. In teaching we should aim to develop will 
power, not to take it for granted as a ready product. 
As the will should ultimately control all the mental pow- 
ers, its proper maturity is a later outcome of education. 
Even supposing that the will has considerable original 



52 GENERAL METHOD. 

native power, it is a power that is likely to lie dormant 
or be used in some ill-direction, unless proper incentives 
are brought to bear upon it. The will is so constituted 
that it is open to appeal and in all the affairs of school 
and of life, incentives of all sorts are constantly brought 
to bear upon it. Why not make an effort to bring to 
bear the incentives that spring out of interest, that 
steady force, which is able to give abiding tendency and 
direction to the efforts? Why not cultivate those nobler 
incentives that spring out of culture-bringing knowl- 
edge? There are, therefore, important preliminaries to 
full will energy, which are secured by the cultivation of 
knowledge, the sensibilities and desires. 

There is a common belief that any subject can be made 
interesting if only the teacher knows the secret of the 
how ; if only he has proper skill. But it is hard even for 
a skillful workman "to make bricks without straw." It 
is often claimed that if there is dullness and disgust with 
a study it is the fault of the teacher. As Mr. Quick 
says, "T would go so far as to lay it down as a rule, that 
whenever children are inattentive and apparently take 
no interest in a lesson, the teacher should always look 
first to himself for the reason. There are perhaps no 
circumstances in which a lack of interest does not origi- 
nate in the mode of instruction adopted by the teacher. " 
This statement assumes that all knowledge is about 
equally interesting to pupils, and everything depends 
upon the manner in which the teacher deals with it. But 
different kinds of knowledge differ widely in their power 
to awaken interest in children. The true idea of interest 
demands that the subject matter be in itself interesting, 
adapted to appeal to a child, and to secure his partici- 
pation. If the interest awakened by bringing the mind 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 53 

in contact with the subject is not spontaneous, it is not 
genuine and helpful in the best sense. One of the first 
and greatest evils of all school courses has been a failure 
to select those subjects, which in themselves are adapted 
to excite the interest of children at each age of progress. 
If we could assume that lessons had been so arranged, we 
might then with Mr. Quick justly demand of a teacher a 
manner of teaching that must make the subjects interest- 
ing, or in other words a manner of treatment that would 
be appropriate to an interesting subject. 

2. There are two kinds of interest that need to be 
clearly distinguished, direct interest, which is felt for the 
thing itself, for its own sake, and indirect interest which 
points to something else as the real source. A miser 
loves gold coins for their own sake, but most people love 
them only because of the things for which they may be 
exchanged. The poet loves the beauty and fragrance of 
flowers, the florist adds to this a mercenary interest. A 
snow-shovel may have no interest for us ordinarily, but 
just when it is needed, on a winter morning, it is an 
object of considerable interest. It is simply a means to 
an end. The kind of interest which we think is so valu- 
able for instruction is direct and intrinsic. The life of 
Benjamin Franklin calls out a strong direct interest in 
the man and his fortunes. A humming bird attracts 
and appeals to us for its own sake. Indirect interest, 
so called, has more of the character of desire. A desire 
to restore one's health will produce great interest in a 
certain health resort, like the Hot Springs, or in some 
method of treatment as the use of Koch's lymph. The 
desire for wealth and business success will lead a mer- 
chant in the fur trade to take interest in seals and seal- 
fishing, and in beavers, trapping, etc. The wish to gain 

—4 



54 GENERAL METHOD. 

a prize will cause a child to take deep interest in a lesson. 
But in all these cases desire precedes interest. Interest, 
indeed, in the thing itself for its own sake is frequently 
not present. It is true in many cases that indirect in- 
terest is not interest at all. It is a dangerous thing in 
education to substitute indirect for direct or true interest. 
The former often means the cultivation, primarily, of 
certain inordinate desires or feelings, such as rivalry, 
pride, jealousy, ambition, reputation, love of self. The 
cultivation of direct interest in all valuable kinds of 
knowledge, on the other hand, leads also to the culti- 
vation of desires, but the desires thus generated are 
pure and generous, the desire for further knowledge of 
botany or history, the desire to imitate what is admir- 
able in human actions and to shun what is mean. The 
desires which spring out of direct interest are elevating, 
while the desires which are associated with indirect in- 
terest are in many cases egotistic and selfish. 

We often say that it is necessary to make a subject 
interesting so that it may be more palatable, more easily 
learned. This is the commonly accepted idea. It is a 
means of helping us to swallow a distasteful medicine. 
This sort of interest is often necessary and may be a sign 
of tact in teaching. But it is negative and weak in after 
results. So far as it produces motives at all they may be 
dangerous. It cannot build up and strengthen character 
but threatens to undermine it by cultivating wrong 
motives. There is no assurance that knowledge thus 
acquired can affect the will and bear fruit in action, even 
though it be the right kind of knowledge, because it is 
not the knowledge in this case that furnishes the incen- 
tives. The interest that is awakened in a subject be- 
cause of its innate attractiveness, leaves incentives which 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 55 

may ripen sooner or later into action. The higher kind 
of interest is direct, intrinsic, not simply receptive, but 
active and progressive. In the knowledge acquired it 
finds only incentives to further acquisition. It is life 
giving and is prompted by the objects themselves, just 
as the interest of boys is awakened by deeds of adventure 
and daring or by a journey into the woods. The interest 
in an object that springs from some other source than 
the thing itself, is indirect, as the desire to master a 
lesson so as to excel others, or gain a prize, or make a 
money profit out of it. In speaking of interest in school 
studies, teachers quite commonly have only the indirect 
in mind, i. e. the kind that leads children to take hold of 
and master their lessons more readily. Interest is thus 
chiefly a means of overcoming distasteful tasks. It is the 
merit of a direct or genuine interest that it aids in mas- 
tering difficulties and in addition to this gives a perma- 
nent pleasure in studies. One of the high aims of instruction 
is to implant a strong permanent interest in studies that 
will last after school days are over. 

3. A live interest springs most easily out of knowl- 
edge subjects like history and natural science. Formal 
studies like grammar and arithmetic awaken it less 
easily. Herbart has classified the chief kinds and sources 
of interest as follows: Interest in nature apart from 
man, and interest in man, society, etc. In nature and 
natural objects as illustrated in the natural sciences there 
are three chief kinds of interest. Empirical, which is 
stirred by the variety and novelty of things seen. There 
is an attractiveness in the many faces and moods of na- 
ture. . Between the years of childhood and old age there 
is scarcely a person who does not enjoy a walk or a ride 
in the open air, where the variety of plant, bird, animal 



56 GENERAL METHOD. 

and landscape makes a pleasing panorama. Speculative 
interest goes deeper and inquires into the relations and 
causal connections of phenomena. It traces out similar- 
ities and sequences, and detects law and unity in nature. 
It is not satisfied with the simple play of variety, but 
seeks for the cause and genesis of things. Even a child 
is anxious to know how a squirrel climbs a tree or cracks 
a nut; where it stores its winter food, its nest and man- 
ner of life in winter. Why is it that a mole can burrow 
and live under ground ? How is it possible for a fish to 
breathe in water? Esthetic interest is awakened by what 
is beautiful, grand and harmonious in nature or art. The 
first glance at great overhanging masses of rock, op- 
presses us with a feeling of awe. The wings of an insect, 
with their delicate tracery and bright hues, are attract- 
ive, and stir us with pleasure. The graceful ferns beside 
the brooks and moss stained rocks suggest fairy-land. 

But stronger even than these interests which attach 
us to the things of nature, are the interests of humanity. 
The concern felt for others in joy or sorrow is based upon 
our interest in them individually, and is syinpathetic. In 
this lies the charm of biography and the novel. Take 
away the personal interest we have in Ivanhoe, Quenten 
Durward, etc., and Scott's glory would quickly depart. 
What empty and spiritless annals would the life of Fred- 
eric the G-reat and Patrick Henry furnish? Social inter- 
est is the regard for the good or evil fortune of societies 
and nations. Upon this depends our concern for the pro- 
gress of liberty and the struggle for free institutions in 
England and other countries. On a smaller scale clubs, 
fraternities and local societies of all kinds are based on 
the social interest. Religious interest finally reveals our 
consciousness of man's littleness and weakness, and of 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 57 

God's providence. As Pestalozzi says, "God is the near- 
est resource of humanity." As individuals or nations 
pass away their fate lies in His hand. 

The sources of interest therefore are varied and pro- 
ductive. Any one of the six is unlimited in extent and 
variety. Together they constitute a boundless field for a 
proper cultivation of the emotional as well as intellectual 
nature of man. A study of these sources of genuine in- 
terest and a partial view of their breadth and depth, 
reveals to teachers what our present school courses tend 
strongly to make them forget. The dull drill upon gram- 
mar, arithmetic, reading, spelling and writing, which 
are regarded as so important as to exclude almost every- 
thing else, has convinced many a child that school is 
veritably a dull place. And many a teacher is just as 
strongly convinced that keeping school is a dull and 
sleepy business. And yet the sources of interest are 
abundant to overflowing for him who has eyes to see. 
That these sources and materials of knowledge, arousing 
deep and lasting interests, are above other things adapted 
to children and to the school room, is a truth worthy of 
all emphasis. 

4. Interest is a good test of the adaptability of knowl- 
edge. When any subject is brought to the attention at 
the right age and in the proper manner, it awakens in 
children a natural and lively feeling. It is evident that 
certain kinds of knowledge are not adapted to a boy at 
the age of ten. He cares nothing about political science 
or medicine or statesmanship or the history of literature. 
These things may be profoundly interesting to a person 
two or three times as old, but not to him. Other things, 
however, the story of Ulysses,, travel, animals, geogra- 
phy and history, even arithmetic, may be very attractive 



58 GENERAL METHOD. 

to a boy of ten. It becomes a matter of importance to 
select those studies and parts of studies for children at 
their changing periods of growth, which are adapted to 
awaken and stimulate their minds. We shall be saved 
then from doing what the best of educators have so fre- 
quently condemned, namely, when the child asks for 
bread give him a stone, or when he asks for fish give him 
a serpent. 

The neglect to take proper cognizance of this princi- 
ple of interest in laying out courses of study and in the 
manner of presenting subjects is certainly one of the 
gravest charges that ever can be brought against the 
schools. It is a sure sign that teachers do not know 
what it means ''to put yourself in his place" to sympa- 
thize with children and feel their needs. The educational 
reformers who have had deepest insight into child-life, 
have given us clear and profound warnings. Rousseau 
says: "Study children, for be sure you do not under- 
stand them. Let childhood ripen in children. The 
wisest apply themselves to what it is important to men 
to know, without considering what children are in a con- 
dition to learn. They are always seeking the man in the 
child, without reflecting what he is before he can be a 
man." It is well for us to take these words home and 
act upon them. 

It is worth the trouble to inquire whether it is possi- 
ble to select subjects for school study which will prove 
essentially attractive and interesting from the age of six 
on. Are there materials for school study which are 
adapted fully to interest first grade children? We know 
that fairy stories appeal directly to them, and they love 
to reproduce them. Reading and spelling in connection 
with these tales are also stirring studies. Reading a 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 59 

familiar story is certainly a much more interesting 
employment than working at the almost meaningless sen- 
tences of a chart or first reader. Number work when 
based upon objects can be made to hold the attention of 
little ones, at least in the last half of the first grade. 
They love also to see and describe flowers, rocks, plants 
and pictures. It probably requires more skillful teach- 
ing to awaken and hold the interest in the first grade 
than in the second or any higher grade unless older chil- 
dren have been dulled by bad instruction. On what prin- 
ciple is it possible to select both interesting and valuable 
materials for the successive grades? We will venture to 
answer this difficult question. "\X 

The main interest of children must be attracted by 
what we may call real knowledge subjects, that is, those 
treating of people (history stories, etc.,) and those treat- 
ing of plants, animals and other natural objects (natural 
science topics). Grammar, arithmetic and spelling are 
chiefly form studies and have less native attraction for 
children. Secondly, it may be laid down as a fact of 
experience that children will be more touched and stimu- 
lated by particular persons and objects in nature than by 
any general propositions, or laws, or classifications. 
They prefer seeing a particular palm tree to hearing a 
general description of palms. A narrative of some 
special deed of kindness moves them more than a dis- 
course on kindness. They feel a natural drawing toward 
real, definite persons and things, and an indifference or 
repulsion toward generalities. They prefer the story to 
the moral. Children are little materialists. They dwell 
in the sense world, or in the world of imagination with 
very clear and definite pictures. But while dealing with 
things of sense and with particulars, it is necessary in 



60 GENERAL METHOD. 

teaching children, to keep an eye directed toward general 
classes and toward those laws and principles that will be 
fully appreciated later. 

In every branch of study there are certain underly- 
ing principles and forms of thought whose thorough mas- 
tery in the lower grades is necessary to successful pro- 
gress. It was a marked quality of Pestalozzi to sift out 
these simple elements and to master them. It is for us 
to make these simple elements intelligible and interest- 
ing by the use of concrete types and illustrations drawn 
from nature and from human life. If we speak of history 
and nature as the two chief subjects of study, the simple, 
fundamental relations of persons to each other in society, 
and the simple, typical objects, forces and laws of nature 
constitute the basis of all knowledge. These elements 
we desire to master. But to make them attractive to 
children, they should not be presented in bald and sterile 
outlines, but in typical forms. All actions and human 
relations must appear in attractive personification. 

Persons speak and aot and virtues shine forth in 
them. We do not study nature's laws at first, but the 
beautiful, typical life forms in nature, the lily, the oak, 
Cinderella and William Tell. For children then, the 
underlying ideas and principles of every study, in order 
to start the interest, must be revealed in the most beau- 
tiful illustrative forms which can be furnished by nature, 
poetry and art. The story of William Tell, although it 
comes all the way from the Alps and from the distant 
traditional history of the Swiss, is one of the best things 
with which to illustrate and impress manliness and patri- 
otism. The fairy stories for still younger children, are 
the best means for teaching kindness or unselfishness, 
because they are so chaste, and beautiful, and graceful. 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 61 

even to the child's thought. The most attractive type- 
forms and life-personifications of fundamental ideas in 
history and nature are the really interesting subjects of 
study for children. To put it in a simple, practical form 
— objects and human actions, if well selected, are the 
best means in the world to excite curiosity and the strong 
spirit ol inquiry. While dwelling upon this thought of 
the attractiveness of type-forms as personified in things 
or persons, we catch a glimpse of a far-reaching truth in 
education. 

The idea of culture epochs^ as typical of the steps of 
progress in the race and also of the periods of growth in 
the child, offers a deep perspective into educational prob- 
lems. In the progress of mankind from a primitive state 
of barbarism to the present state of culture in Europe 
and in the United States, there has been a succession of 
not very clearly defined stages. In point of government, 
for example, there has been the savage, nomad, patri- 
arch, kingdom, constitutional monarchy, democracy, re- 
public, federal republic. There have been great epochs 
of political convulsion in the conflicts with external 
powers and in civil struggles and revolutions. In the 
growth of handicrafts, arts, manufactures and inven- 
tions, there has been a series of advances from the time 
when men first began to cultivate the ground, to reduce 
the metals and to bring the forces of nature into service. 
In the development of human society, therefore, and in 
the progress of arts and human knowledge, there are 
certain typical stages whose proper use may help us to 
solve some of the difficult problems in educating the 
young. All nations have passed through some of these 
important epochs. The United States, for example, since 
the first settlements upon the east coast, have gone rap- 



62 GENERAL METHOD. 

idly through many of the characteristic epochs of the 
world's history, in politics, commerce and industry, in 
social life, education and religion. 

The importance of the culture epochs for schools lies 
in the fact, accepted by many great writers, that chil- 
dren in their growth from infancy to maturity, pass 
through a series of steps which correspond broadly to 
the historical epochs of mankind. A child's life up to 
the age of twenty, is a sort of epitome of the world's 
history. Our present state of culture is a result of 
growth, and if a child is to appreciate society as it now 
is, he must grow into it out of the past, by having trav- 
eled through the same stages it has traced. But this is 
only a very superficial way of viewing the relation be- 
tween child and world history. The periods of child life 
are so similar to the epochs of history, that a child finds 
its proper mental food in the study of the materials fur- 
nished by these epochs. Let us test this. A child -eight 
years old cares nothing about reciprocity or free silver, 
or university extension. Robinson Crusoe, however, 
who typifies mankind's early struggle with the forces 
of nature, claims his undivided attention. A boy of ten 
will take more delight in the story of King Alfred or 
William Tell than in twenty Gladstones or Bismarks. 
Not that Gladstone's work is less important or interest- 
ing to the right person, but the boy does not live and 
have his being in the Gladstonian age. Not all parts 
of history, indeed, are adapted to please and instruct 
some period of youth. Whole ages have been destitute 
of such materials, barren as deserts for educational pur- 
poses. But those epochs which have been typical of 
great experiences, landmarks of progress, have also 
found poets and historians to describe them. The great 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 63 

works of poets and historians contain also the great 
object lessons upon which to cultivate the minds of chil- 
dren. Some of the leading characters of fiction and his- 
tory are the best personifications of the steps of progress 
in the history of the race. Crusoe, Abraham, Ulysses, 
Alfred, Tell, David, Charlemagne, Moses, Columbus, 
Washington. These men, cast in a large and heroic 
mold, represent great human strivings and are adapted 
to teach the chief lessons of history, if properly selected 
and arranged. These typical individual characters, illus- 
trate the fundamental ideas that will give insight and 
appreciation for later social forms. They contain, hid- 
den as it were, the essential part of great historical and 
social truths of far-reaching importance. The culture 
epochs will be seen later to be important in solving the 
problem of the concentration of instruction along certain 
lines, but in the present discussion, their value is chiefly 
seen in their adaptability to arouse the interest of chil- 
dren, by supplying peculiarly congenial materials of 
instruction in the changing phases of child progress. 

5. The cultivation of a many-sided interest is desira- 
ble in order to avoid narrowness, and to open up the 
various sources of mental activity, i. e. , to stimulate 
mental vigor along many lines. But this very variety of 
interests may lead to scattering and superficial knowledge. 
And in its results many-sided interest would seem to 
point naturally to many-sided activity, that is, to multi- 
plicity of employments, to that character which in Yankee 
phrase is designated as "Jack of all trades and master of 
none. " If instead of being allowed to spread out so much 
the educational stream is confined between narrow banks, 
it will show a deep and full current. If allowed to spread 
over the marshes and plains, it becomes^ sluggish and 



64 GENEEAL METHOD. 

brackish. Our course of study for the common schools 
in recent years, has been largely added to and has been 
extending over the whole field of knowledge. History, 
geography, natural science lessons, and drawing have 
been added to the old reading, writing, arithmetic and 
grammar. There may appear to be more variety, but 
less strength. When in addition to this greater variety 
of studies, enthusiastic teachers desire to increase the 
quantity of knowledge in each branch and to present as 
many interesting facts as possible, at every point, Ve 
have the overloading of the school course. This effect 
will be noticed in a later chapter in its bearing upon con- 
centration. Children have too much to learn. They be- 
come pack-horses, instead of free spirits walking in the 
fields of knowledge. Mental vigor after all is worth more 
than a mind grown corpulent and lazy with an excess of 
pabulum, overfed. The cultivation therefore of a many- 
sided interest ceases to be a blessing as soon as encyclo- 
pedic knowledge becomes its aim. In fact the desire on 
the part of teachers to make the knowledge of any sub- 
ject complete and encyclopedic destroys all true interest. 

The solution of this great problem does not consist 
in identifying many-sided interest with encyclopedic 
knowledge, but in such a detailed study of typical forms 
in each case as will give insight into that branch without 
any pretension to exhaustive knowledge. Certainly a 
true interest in plants does not require that we become 
acquainted with all the species of all the genera. But a 
proper study of a few typical forms in a few of the fami- 
lies and genera might produce a much deeper interest in 
nature and in her laws. 

The culture of a many-sided interest is essential to a 
full development and perfection of the mental activities. 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 65 

It is easy to see that interest in any subject gives all 
thought upon it a greater vigor and intensity. Mental 
action in all directions is strengthened and vivified by a 
direct interest. On the other hand mental life diminishes 
with the loss of interest, and even in fields of knowledge 
in which a man has displayed unusual mastery, a loss of 
interest is followed by a loss of energy. Excluding in- 
terest is like cutting off the circulation from a limb. 

Perfect vigor of thought which we aim at in educa- 
tion, is marked by strength along three lines, the vigor 
of the individual ideas, the extent and variety of ideas 
under control, and the connectioil and harmony of ideas. 
It is the highest general aim of intellectual education to 
strengthen mental vigor in these three directions. Many- 
sided interest is conducive to all three. Every thought 
that finds lodgment in the mind is toned up and strength- 
ened by interest. It is also easier to retain and repro- 
duce some idea that has once been grasped with full 
feeling of interest. An interest that has been developed 
along all leading lines of study has a proper breadth and 
comprehensiveness and cannot be hampered and clogged 
by narrow restraints and prejudice. We admire a per- 
son not simply because he has a few clear ideas, but also 
for the extent and variety of this sort of information. 
Our admiration ceases when he shows ignorance or prej- 
udice or lack of sympathy with important branches of 
study. 

Finally, the unity and harmony of the varied kinds of 
knowledge are a great source of interest. The tracing of 
connections between different studies and the insight 
that comes from proper associations, are among the high- 
est delights of learning. The connexion and harmony of 
ideas will be discussed under concentration. 



66 GENERAL METHOD. 

The six interests above mentioned are to be devel- 
oped along parallel lines. They are to be kept in proper 
equipoise. It is not designed that any one shall be devel- 
oped to the overshadowing of the others. They are like 
six pillars upon which the structure of a liberal educa- 
tion is rested. A cultivation of any one, exclusively, 
may be in place when the work of general education is 
complete and a profession or life labor has been chosen. 

7. It is also true that a proper interest is a protec- 
tion against the desires, disorderly impulses and passions. 
One of the chief ends of education is to bring the inclina- 
tions and importunate desires under mastery, to estab- 
lish a counterpoise to them by the steady and persistent 
forces of education. A many-sided interest cultivated 
along the chief paths of knowledge, implies such mental 
vigor and such preoccupation with worthy subjects as 
naturally to discourage unworthy desires. 

Locke says, self-restraint, the mastery over one's 
inclinations, is the foundation of virtue. "He that has 
found a way how to keep a child's spirit easy, active and 
free, and yet at the same time, to restrain him from 
many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things 
that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to 
reconcile these seeming contradictions, has, in my opin- 
ion, got the true secret of education." But it is a secret 
still, the central question remains unanswered. How is 
the teacher to approach and influence the will of the 
child? Is it by supposing that the child has a will al- 
ready developed and strong enough to be relied upon? 
On the contrary, must not the teacher put incentives in 
the path of the pupil, ideas and feelings that guide him 
to self denial? 

Interest as a source of will-stimulus has peculiar ad- 



NATURE OF INTEREST. 67 

vantages. It is not desired that the inclinations and 
feelings shall get the mastery of the mind, certainly not 
the disorderly and momentary desires. Higher desires, 
indeed, should properly influence the will, as the desire 
of the approval of conscience, the desire to attain excel- 
lence, to gain strength and mastery, to serve others, etc. 
But the importance of awakening interest as a basis of 
will cultivation is found in the favorable mental state in- 
duced by interest as a preliminary to will action along 
the best lines. Interest is not an impetuous force like 
the desires, prompting to instant action, but a quiet, per- 
manent undertone, which brings everything into readi- 
ness for action, clears the deck and begins the attack. 
It would be a vast help to many boys and girls if the 
irksomeness of study in arithmetic or grammar, which is 
so fatal to will energy, could give way to the spur of in- 
terest, and when the wheels are once set in motion, pro- 
gress would not only begin but be sustained by interest. 
8. It is pretty generally agreed to by thoughtful edu- 
cators, that in giving a child the broad foundations of 
education, we should aim not so much at knowledge as at 
capacity and appreciation for it. A universal recep- 
tivity, such as Rousseau requires of Emile, is a desidera- 
tum. Scarcely a better dowry can be bestowed upon a 
child by education, than a desire for knowledge and an 
intelligent interest in all important branches of study. 
Herbart's many-sided interest is to strengthen and branch 
out from year to year during school life and become a 
permanent tendency or force in later years. No school 
can give even an approach to full and encyclopedic knowl- 
edge, but no school is so humble that it may not throw 
open the doors and present many a pleasing prospect 
into the fields of learning. 



68 GENERAL METHOD. 

With Herbart, therefore, a many-sided, harmonious 
interest promotes will-energy through all the efforts of 
learning from childhood up, and when the work of gen- 
eral education has been completed, the youth is ready to 
launch out into the world with a strong, healthy appetite 
for information in many directions. The best fruitage 
of such a course will follow in the years that succeed 
school life. 



CONCENTRATION. 69 



CHAPTER IV, 



CONCENTRATION. 

By concentration is meant such a connexion between 
the parts of each study and such a spinning of relations 
and connecting links between different sciences that 
unity may spring out of the variety of knowledge. His- 
tory, for example, is a series and collocation of facts 
explainable on the 'basis of cause and effect, a develop- 
ment. On the other hand, history is intimately related 
to geography, language, natural science, literature and 
mathematics. It would be impossible to draw real his- 
tory out by the roots without drawing all other studies 
out bodily with it. Is there then any reason why school 
history should ignore its blood relationships to other 
branches of knowledge? 

Concentration is so bound up with the idea of char- 
acter forming that it includes more than school studies. 
It lays hold of home influences and all the experiences of 
life outside of school and brings them into the daily ser- 
vice of school studies. It is just as important to bind up 
home experience with arithmetic, language and other 
studies as it is to see the connexion between geography 
and history. In the end, all the knowledge and expe- 
rience gained by a person at home, at school and else- 
where should be classified and related, each part brought 
into its right associations with other parts. 

Nor is it simply a question of throwing the varied 
sorts of knowledge into a network of crossing and inter- 

—5 



70 GENERAL METHOD. 

woven series so that the person may have ready access 
along various lines to all his knowledge stores. Concen- 
tration draws the feelings and the will equally into its 
circle of operations. To imagine a character without 
feeling and will would be like thinking a watch without a 
mainspring. All knowledge properly taught generates 
feeling. The will is steadily laying out, during the form- 
ative period of education, the highways of its future 
ambitions and activities. Habits of willing are formed 
along the lines of associated thought and feeling. The 
more feeling and will are enlisted through all the avenues 
of study and experience, the more permanent will be their 
influence upon character. 

In attempting to solve the problem of concentration 
the question has been raised whether a single study, the 
most important, of course, should constitute a concen- 
trating nucleus, like the hub in a wheel, or whether all 
studies and experience are to be brought into an organic 
whole of related parts. It is evident that history and 
natural science at least hold a leading place among 
studies and determine to some extent the selection of 
materials in reading and language lessons. 

Concentration evidently involves a solution of the 
question as to the relative value of studies. All the 
light that the discussion of relative values can furnish 
will be needed in selecting the different lines of appro- 
priate study and in properly adjusting them to one 
another. The theory of hiterest will also aid us in this 
field of investigation. 

Accepting therefore the results of the two preceding 
chapters that history (in the broad sense) is the study 
which best cultivates moral dispositions; secondly, that 
natural science furnishes the indispensable insight into 



CONCENTRATION. 71 

the external world, man's physical environment, and, 
thirdly, that language, mathematics and drawing are but 
the formal side and expression of the two realms of real 
knowledge, we have the broad outlines of any true course 
of education. In more definitely laying out the parts of 
this course the natural mterests and capacities of children 
in their successive periods of growth must be taken into 
the reckoning. When a course of study has been laid out 
on this basis, bringing the three great threads or cables 
of human knowledge into proper juxtaposition at the va- 
rious points, we shall be ready to speak of the manner of 
really executing the plan of concentration. Even after 
the general plan is complete and the studies arranged the 
real work of concentration consists in fixing the relations 
as the facts are learned. 

Concentration takes for granted that the facts of 
knowledge will be acquired. It is but half the problem 
to learn the facts. The other half consists in under- 
standing and fixing the relations. Most teachers will 
admit that each lesson should be a collection of connected 
facts and that every science should consist of a series of 
derivative lessons. And yet the study and mastery of 
arithmetic as a connection of closely related principles is 
not generally appreciated. With proper reflection it is 
not difficult to see that the facts of a single study like 
grammar or botany should stand in close serial or causal 
relation. If they are seen and fixed with a clear insight 
into these connections, by touching the chain of associa- 
tions at any point one may easily bring the whole matter 
to remembrance. 

Concentration however is chiefly concerned with the 
relation of different studies to each other. In this larger 
sense of an intimate binding together of all studies and 



72 GENERAL METHOD. 

experience into a close network of interwoven parts, con- 
centration is now geneT-ally ignored by the schools. In 
fact it would almost seem as if the purpose of teachers 
were to make a clear separation of the different studies 
from one another and to seal up each one in a separate bot- 
tle, as it were. The problem appears in two phases. 1. Tak- 
ing the school studies as they now are, is it desirable to 
pay more attention to the natural connections between 
such studies as reading, geography, history and lan- 
guage, to open up frequent communicating avenues be- 
tween the various branches of educational work? 2. Or 
if concentration is regarded as still more important, shall 
the subject matter of school studies be rearranged and 
the lessons in different branches so adjusted to each other 
that the number of close relations between them will be 
greatly increased ? Then with the intentional increase 
of such connecting links would follow a more particular 
care in fixing them. 

We have assumed the latter position, and claim that 
the whole construction of the school course and the whole 
method of teaching should contribute powerfully to the 
unification of all the knowledge and experience in each 
child's mind. Without laying any undue stress upon 
simple knowledge, we believe that a small amount of well 
articulated knowledge is more valuable than a large 
amount of loose and fragmentary information. A' small, 
disciplined police force is able to cope with a large, unor- 
ganized mob. "The very important principle here in- 
volved is that the value of knowledge depends not only 
upon the distinctness and ciGcuracy of the ideas, but also 
upon the closeness and extent of the relations into which 
they enter. This is a fundamental principle of educa- 
tion. It was Herbart who said, 'Only those thoughts 



CONCENTRATION. 73 

come easily and frequently to the mind which have at 
some time made a strong impression and which possess 
numerous connexions with other thoughts.' And psy- 
chology teaches that those ideas which take an isolated 
station in the mind are usually weak in the impression 
they make and are easily forgotten. A fact, however 
important in itself, if learned without reference to other 
facts, is quite likely to fade quickly from the memory. 
It is for this reason that the witticisms, sayings and 
scattered pieces of information, which we pick up here 
and there, are so soon forgotten. There is no way of 
bringing about their frequent reproduction when they 
are so disconnected. For the reproduction of ideas is 
largely governed by the law of association. One idea 
reminds us of another closely related to it; this of 
another, etc., till a long series is reproduced. They are 
bound together like the links of a chain, and one draws 
another along with it just as one link of a chain drags an- 
other after it. A mental image that is not one of such a 
series cannot hope to come often to consciousness; it 
must as a rule sink into oblivion, because the usual means 
of calling it forth are wanting." (F. McMurry, "Relation 
of natural science to other studies.") 

We are not conscious of the constant dependence of 
our thinking and conversation upon the law of associa- 
tion. It may be frequently observed in the familiar con- 
versation of several persons in a company. The simple 
mention of a topic will often suggest half a dozen things 
that different ones are prompted to say about it, and 
may even give direction to the conversation for a whole 
evening. 

Now if it is true that ideas are more easily remem- 
bered and used if associated let us increase the associa- 



74 GENERAL METHOD. 

tions. Why not bind all the studies and ideas of a child 
as closely together as possible by natural lines of asso- 
ciation ? Why not select for reading lessons those ma- 
terials which will throw added light upon contempo- 
raneous lessons in history, botany and geography? Then 
if the reading lesson presents in detail the battle of 
King's Mountain^ take the pains to refer to this part 
of the history and put this lesson into connexion with 
historical facts elsewhere learned. If a reading lesson 
give a full description of the pahn tree, its growth and 
use, what better setting could this knowledge find than 
in the geography of Northern Africa and the West 
Indies? 

The numerous associations into which ideas enter, 
without producing confusion make them more service- 
able for every kind of use. "It is only by associating 
thoughts closely that a person comes to possess them 
securely and have command over them. One's repro- 
duction of ideas is then rapid enough to enable him to 
comprehend a situation quickly, and form a judgment 
with some safety; his knowledge is all present and ready 
for use; while on the other hand, one whose related 
thoughts have never been firmly welded together repro- 
duces slowly and in consequence is wavering and unde- 
cided. His knowledge is not at his command and he is 
therefore weak." (P. McMurry.) 

The greater then the number of clear mental relations 
of a fact to other facts in the same and in other studies 
the more likely it is to render instant obedience to the 
will when it is needed. Such ready mastery of one's past 
experiences and accumulations promotes confidence and 
power in action. Concentration is manifestly designed 
to give strength and decision to character. But a care- 



CONCENTRATION. 75 

less education by neglecting this principle, by scattering 
the mind's forces over broad fields and by neglecting the 
connecting roads and paths that should bind together 
the separate fields, can actually undermine force and 
decision of character. 

The centre for concentrating efforts in education is 
not so much the knowledge given in any school course as 
the child's mind itself. We do not desire to find in the 
school studies a new centre for a child's life so much as 
the means for fortifying that original stronghold of char- 
acter which rests upon native mental characteristics and 
early home influences. We have in mind not the objec- 
tive unity of different studies considered as complete and 
related sciences, nor any general model to which each 
mind is to be conformed but the practical union of all the 
experiences and knowledge that find entrance into a par- 
ticular mind. 

The unity of the personality as gradually developed in 
a child by wise education is essential to strength of char- 
acter. Ackerman says on this point, (" Ueber Concentra- 
tion," p. 20.) "In behalf of character development, which 
is the ultimate aim of all educative effort, pedagogy re- 
quires of instruction that it aid in forming the unity of 
the personality^ the most primitive basis of character. 
In requiring that the unity of the personality be formed 
it is presupposed that this unity is not some original 
quality, but something to be first developed. It remains 
for psychology to prove this and to indicate in what man- 
ner the unity of the personality originates. Now psy- 
chology teaches that the personality, the ego, is not 
something original, but something that must be first de- 
veloped and is also changeable and variable. The ego is 
nothing else than a psychological phenomenon, namely, 



76 GENERAL METHOD. 

the consciousness of an interchange between the parts of 
an extensive complex of ideas, or the reference of all our 
ideas and of the other psychical states springing out of 
them to each other. Experience teaches this. In infancy 
the ego, the personality, is consciously realized in one 
person sooner, in another later. In the different ages of 
life also the personality possesses a different content. 
The deeper cause for the mutual reference of all our man- 
ifold ideas to each other and for their union in a single 
point, as it were, may be found in the simplicity of the 
soul^ which constrains into unity all things that are not 
dissociated by hindrance or contradiction. The soul, 
therefore, in the face of the varied influences produced 
by contact with nature and society, is active in concen- 
trating its ideas, so that with mental soundness as a 
basis, the ego, once formed, in spite of all the transitions 
through which it may pass, still remains the same." 

There is then a natural tendency of the mind to unify 
all its ideas, feelings, incentives. On the other hand the 
knowledge and experience of life are so varied and seem- 
ingly contradictory that a young person, if left to him- 
self or if subjected to a wrong schooling, will seldom 
work his way to harmony and unity. In spite of the fact 
that the soul is a simple unit and tends naturally to unify 
all its contents, the common experience of life discovers 
in it unconnected and even antagonistic thought — and 
knowledge centers. People are sometimes painfully sur- 
prised to see how the same mind may be lifted by exalted 
sentiments and depressed by the opposite. The frequent 
examples that come to notice of men of superiority and 
vitue along certain lines, who give way to weakness and 
wrong in other directions, are sufficient evidence that 
good and evil may be systematically cultivated in the 



CONCENTRATION. 77 

same character, and that instead of unity and harmony 
education may collect in the soul heterogeneous and war- 
ing elements which make it a battle ground for life. All 
such disharmony and contradiction lend inconsistency 
and weakness to character. 

Among other things tending toward consistency of 
character there must be harmony between the school and 
home life of a child. At home or among companions, 
perhaps unknown to the teacher, a boy or girl may be 
forming an habitual tendency and desire, more powerful 
than any other force in its life, and yet at variance to 
the best influence of the school. If possible the teacher 
should draw the home and school into a closer bond so as 
to get a better grasp of the situation and its remedy. 
The school will fail to leave an effective impress upon such 
a child unless it can get a closer hold upon the sympa- 
thies and thus neutralize an evil tendency. It must 
league itself with better home influences so as to implant 
its own impulses in home life. How to unify home and 
school influences is one of those true and abiding prob- 
lems of education that appeals strongly and sympathetic- 
ally to parents and teachers. 

Not only can incompatible lines of thought and of 
moral action become established in the same person, but 
even those studies which could be properly harmonized 
and unified by education may lie in the mind so disjointed 
and unrelated as to render the person awkward and help- 
less in spite of much knowledge. In unifying the vari- 
ous parts of school education and in bringing them into 
close connexion with children's other experiences, the 
school life fulfills one of its chief duties. 

In later years when we consider the results of school 
methods upon our own character we can see the weakness 



78 GENERAL METHOD. 

of a system of education which lacks concentration, a 
weakness which shows itself in a lack of retentiveness of 
acquired knowledge and lack of proper habits of thinking. 
We are only too frequently reminded of the loose and 
scrappy state of our acquired knowledge by the ease with 
which it eludes the memory when it is needed. To 
escape from this disagreeable consciousness in after 
years, we begin to spy out a few of the mountain peaks 
of memory which still give evidence of submerged conti- 
nents. Around these islands we begin to collect the 
wreckage of the past and the accretions of later study 
and experience. A thoughtful person naturally falls into 
the habit of collecting ideas around a few centres, and of 
holding them in place by links of association. In Ameri- 
can history for instance, it is inevitable that our knowl- 
edge becomes congested in certain important epochs, or' 
around the character and life of a few typical persons. 
The same seems to be true also of other studies, as geog- 
raphy and even geometry. 

Another reason why knowledge is so poorly under- 
stood and remembered is because its application to other 
branches of knowledge, a little apart from the main line, 
are so little observed and fixed. Looking back upon our 
school studies we often wonder what botany, geometry 
and drawing have to do with our present needs. Each 
subject was so compactly stowed away on a shelf by 
itself that it is always thought of in that isolation, like 
Hammerfest or the Falkland Islands in geography, — -out 
of the way places. 

Are the various sciences so distinct and so widely sep- 
arated in nature and in real life as they were in school ? 
An observant boy in the woods will notice important re- 
lations between animals and plants, between plants, soil 



CONCENTRATION. 79 

and seasons that are not referred to in the text books. 
In a carpenter shop he will observe the relation of differ- 
ent kinds of wood, metals, and tools to each other that 
will surprise and instruct him. In the real life of the 
country or town the objects and materials of knowledge, 
representing the sciences of nature and the arts of life, 
are closely jumbled together and intimately dependent 
upon each other. The very closeness of connexions and 
the lack of orderly arrangement shown by things in life 
make it necessary in schools to classify and arrange into 
sciences. But it is a vital mistake to suppose that knowl- 
edge is complete when classified and learned in this scien- 
tific form. Classifications and books are but a faulty 
means of getting a clear insight into nature and human 
life or society. Knowledge should not only be mastered 
in its scientific classifications but also constantly referred 
back to things as seen in practical life and closely traced 
out and fixed in those connexions. The vital connexions 
of different studies with each other are best known and 
realized by the study of nature and society. 

In later life we are convinced at every turn of the 
need of being able to recognize and use knowledge out- 
side of its scientific connexions. A lawyer finds many 
subjects closely mingled in his daily business which were 
never mentioned together in text books. The ordinary 
run of cases will lead him through a kaleidoscope of nat- 
ural science, human life, commerce, history, mathematics, 
literature and law, not to speak of less agreeable things. 
But the same is true of a physician, merchant or farmer 
in different ways. 

Shall we answer to all this that schools were never 
designed to teach such things? They belong to the school 
of life, etc. ? We are accustomed to take refuge behind 



80 GENERAL METHOD. 

the so-called "mental discipline" that results from studies 
whether anything is remembered of them or not. There 
are doubtless certain formal habits of mind that result 
from study even though, like Latin, they are cast aside 
as an old garment at the end of school daj s. Transfer- 
ring our argument then to this ground, is there any 
"habit of thinking" more valuable than that bent of mind 
which is not satisfied with the mere memorizing of a fact 
but seeks to interpret its value by judging of its influence 
upon other facts and their influence upon it? No subject 
is understood by itself nor even by its relation to other 
facts in the same science, but by its relation to the whole 
field of knowledge. Unless it can be proven that the 
study of relations is above the school-boy capacity it is 
doubtful if there is any mental habit so valuable at the 
close of school studies as the disposition to think and pon- 
der^ to trace relations. 

The multiplication of studies in the common school in 
recent years will soon compel us to pay more attention 
to concentration or the mutual relation of knowledges. 
There is a resistless tendency to convert the course of 
studies into an encyclopedia of knowledge. To perceive 
this it is only necessary to note the new studies incorpo- 
rated into the public school within a generation. Draw- 
ing, natural science, gymnastics and manual training are 
entirely new, while language lessons, history and music 
have been expanded to include much that is new for lower 
grades. Still other studies are even now seeking admis- 
sion as modern languages, geometry and sewing. In 
spite of all that has been said by educatioDal reformers 
against making the acquisition of knowledge the basis of 
education, the range and variety of studies has been 
greatly extended and chiefly through the influence of the 



CONCENTRATION. 81 

reformers. This expansive movement appears in schools 
of all grades. The secondary and fitting schools and the 
universities have spread their branches likewise over a 
much wider area of studies. We are in the full sweep of 
this movement along the whole line and it has not yet 
reached its flood. 

The simplicity of the old course both in the common 
school and in higher institutions is in marked contrast to 
the present multiplicity. It was a narrow current in 
which education used to run but it was deep and strong. 
In higher institutions the mastery of Latin and of Latin 
authors was the sine qua non. In the common school 
arithmetic was held in almost equal honor. Strong char- 
acters have often been developed by a narrow and rigid 
training along a single line of duty as is shown in the 
case of the Jesuits, the Humanists and the more recent 
devotees of natural science. 

As contrasted with this the most striking feature of 
our public schools now is their shallow and superficial 
work. It is probable that the teaching in lower grades 
is better than ever before, but as the tasks accumulate in 
the higher grades there is a great amount of smattering. 
The prospect is however that this disease will grow worse 
before a remedy can be applied. The first attempt to 
cultivate broader and more varied fields of knowledge in 
the common school must necessarily exhibit a shallow re- 
sult. Teachers are not familiar with the new subjects, 
methods are not developed and the proper adjustments of 
the studies to each other are neglected. 

No one who is at all familiar with our present status 
will claim that drawing, natural science, geography and 
language are yet properly adjusted to each other. The 
task is a difficult one but is being grappled by many 
earnest teachers. 



82 GENERAL METHOD. 

It is obvious tliat the first serious effort to remedy 
this shallowness will be made by deepening and intensi- 
fying the culture of the new fields. The knowledge of 
each subject must be made as complete and detailed as 
possible. Well qualified teachers and specialists will of 
course accomplish the most. They will zealously try to 
teach all the important things in each branch of study. 
But where is the limit? The capacity of children! And 
it will not be long before philanthropists, physicians, 
reformers and all the friends of mankind will call a 
decisive halt. Children were not born simply to be 
stuffed with knowledge, like turkeys for a Christmas din- 
ner. 

It appears therefore that we must steer between 
Scylla and Charybdis, or that we are in a first-class edu. 
cational dilemma. This conviction is strengthened by 
the reflection that there is no escape from fairly facing 
the situation. Having once put our hand to the plow we 
can not look back. The common school course has greatly 
expanded in recent years and there is no probability that 
it will ever contract. It has expanded in response to 
proper universal educational demands. For we may 
fairly believe that most of the studies recently incorpo- 
rated into the school course are essential elements in the 
education of every child that is to grow up and take a 
due share in our society. It is too late to sound the 
retreat. The educational reformers have battled stoutly 
for three hundred years for just the course of study that 
we are now beginning to accept. The edict can not be 
revoked, that every child is entitled to an harmonious and 
equable development of all its human powers, or as Her- 
bart calls it, a harmonious culture of many-sided interest. 
The nature of every child imperatively demands such broad 



CONCENTRATION. 83 

and liberal culture, and the varied duties and responsi- 
bilities of the citizen make it a practical necessity. No 
narrow, one-sided culture will ever equip a child to act a 
just part in the complex social, political and industrial 
society of our time. But the demand for depth of knowl- 
edge is just as imperative as that for comprehensiveness. 

It is clear that two serious dangers threaten the 
quality of our education: First, loose and shallow knowl- 
edge; second, overloading with encyclopedic knowledge. 
What can concentration do to remedy the one and check 
the other? The cure for these J;wo evils will be found in 
so adjusting the studies to e*ach other, in so building 
them into each other, as to secure a mutual support. 

The study of a topic not only as it is affected by oth- 
ers in the same subject, but also by facts and principles 
in other studies, is an antidote against superficial learn- 
ing. In tracing these casual relations, in observing the 
resemblances and analogies, the interdependence of 
studies, as geography, history and natural science, a 
thoughtfulness and clearness of insight are engendered 
quite contrary to loose and shallow study. 

Secondly. Concentration at once discards the idea of 
encyclopedic knowledge as an aim of school education. 
It puts a higher estimate upon related ideas and a lower 
one upon that of complete or encyclopedic information. 
All the cardinal branches of education indeed shall be 
taught in the school, but only the essential^ the typical^ 
will be selected and an exhaustive knowledge of any sub- 
ject is out of the question. Concentration will put a con- 
stant check upon over-accumulation of facts, and will 
rather seek to strengthen an idea by association with 
familiar things than to add a new fact to it. No matter 
how thorough and enthusiastic a specialist one may be, 



84 GENERAL METHOD. 

he is called upon to curtail the quantity of his subject 
and bring it into proper dependence upon other studies. 
Historically considered the principle of concentration 
has been advocated and emphasized by many writers and 
teachers. The most striking and decided attempt to ap- 
ply it was made by Jacotot in the first quarter of this 
century and had great success in France. Mr. Joseph 
Payne in interpreting Jacotot (Lectures on the Science 
and Art of Ed. p. 339) lays down as his main precept, 
"Learn something thoroughly and refer everything else 
to it." He emphasized above everything else clearness of 
insight and coinexion between the parts of knowledge. 
It was principally applied to the study of languages and 
called for perfect memorizing by incessant repetition and 
rigid questioning by the teacher to insure perfect under- 
standing, in the first instance, of new facts acquired, and 
secondly firm association with all previous knowledge. 
Jacotot and his disciples reached notable results by an 
heroic and consistent application of this principle and 
some of our present methods in language are based upon 
it. But on the whole the principle was only partially 
and mechanically applied. Its aim was primarily intel- 
lectual, even linguistic, not moral. There was no philo- 
sophical effort made to determine the relative value of 
studies and thus find out what study or series of studies 
best deserved to take the leading place in the school 
course. The importance of interest, as a means of rous- 
ing mental vigor and as a criterion for selecting concen- 
trating materials suited to children at different ages, was 
overlooked. 

A kind of concentration has long been practiced in 
Germany and to a considerable extent in our own schools 
which is known as the concentric circles. 



CONCENTRATION. 85 

In our schools it is illustrated by the treatment of 
geography, grammar, and history. In beginning the 
study of geography in the third or fourth grade it has 
been customary to outline the whole science in the first 
primary book. The earth as a whole and its daily and 
yearly motion, the chief continents and oceans, the gen- 
eral geographical notions, mountain, lake, river, etc., are 
briefly treated by definition. Having completed this gen- 
eral framework of geographical knowledge during the 
first year, the second year, or at least the second book, 
takes up the same round of topics again and enters into 
a somewhat fuller treatment of continents, countries, 
states, and political divisions. The last two years of the 
common school may be spent upon a large, complete 
geography, which, with larger, fuller maps and more 
names, gives also a more detailed account of cities, pro- 
ducts, climate, political divisions, and commerce. Finally 
physical geography is permitted to spread over much the 
same ground from a natural-science standpoint giving 
many additional and interesting facts and laws concern- 
ing zones, volcanoes, ocean beds and currents, atmos- 
pheric phenomena, geologic history, etc. The same earth, 
the same lands and oceans furnish the outline in each 
case, and we travel over the same ground three or four 
times successively, each time adding new facts to the 
original nucleus. There is an old proverb that ' 'repeti- 
tion is the mother of studies," and here we have a sys- 
tematic plan for repetition extending through the school 
course with the advantage of new and interesting facts 
to add to the grist each time it is sent through the mill. 
It is an attractive plan at first sight, but if we appeal 
to experience are we not reminded rather that it was dull 
repetition of names, boundaries, location of places, etc., 
—6 



86 GENERAL METHOD. 

and after all not much detailed knowledge was gained 
even in the higher grades? Again, is it not contrary to 
reason to begin with definitions and general notions in 
the lower grades and end up with the interesting and 
concrete in the higher? 

In language lessons and grammar it has been cus- 
tomary to learn the kinds of sentence and the parts of 
speech in a simple form in the third and fourth grades 
and in each succeeding year to review these topics, grad- 
ually enlarging and expanding the definitions, inflexions, 
and constructions into a fuller etymology and syntax. 
In United States history we are beginning to adopt a 
similar plan of repetitions, and the frequent reviews in 
arithmetic are designed to make good the lack of thor- 
oughness and mastery which should characterize each 
successive grade of work. The course of religious in- 
struction given in European schools is based upon the 
same reiteration year by year of essential religious ideas. 
The whole plan, as illustrated by different studies, is 
based upon a successive enlargement of a subject in con- 
centric circles with the implied constant repetition and 
strengthening of leading ideas. A framework of impor- 
tant notions in each branch is kept before the mind year 
after year, repeated, explained, enlarged with faith in a 
constantly increasing depth of meaning. There is no 
doubt that under good teaching the principle of the con- 
centric circles produces some excellent fruits, a mastery 
of the subject and a concentration of ideas within the 
limits of a single study. 

The disciples of Herbart, while admitting the merits 
of the concentric circles, have subjected the plan to a 
severe criticism. They say it begins with general and 
abstract notions and puts off the interesting details to 



CONCENTRATION. ' 87 

the later years, while any correct method with children 
will take the interesting particulars first and by a gradual 
process of comparison and induction reach the general 
principles and concepts at the close. It inevitably leads 
to a dull and mechanical repetition instead of cultivating 
an interesting comparison of new and old and a thought" 
ful retrospect. It is a clumsy and distorted application 
of the principle of apperception, of going from the known 
to the unknown. Instead of marching forward into new 
fields of knowledge with a proper basis of supplies in con" 
quered fields, it gleans again and again in fields already 
harvested. For this reason it destroys a proper interest 
by hashing up the same old ideas year after year. Finally 
the concentric circles are not even designed to bring the 
different school studies into relation to each other. At 
best they contribute to a more thorough mastery of each 
study. They leave the separate branches of the course 
isolated and unconnected, an aggregation of unrelated 
thought complexes. True concentration should leave 
them an organic whole of intimate knowledge relations? 
conducing to strength and unity of character. 

There is a growing conviction among teachers that 
we need a closer articulation of studies with one another. 
The expansion of the school course over new fields of 
knowledge and the multiplication of studies already dis- 
cussed compels us to seek for a simplification of the 
course, A hundred years ago, yes even fifty years ago, 
it was thought that the extension of our territory and 
government to the present limits would be impossible. 
It was plainly stated that one government could never 
hold together people so widely separated. Mr. Fiske says: 
(The Critical Period of Am. Hist., p. 60) "Even with 
all other conditions favorable, it is doubful if the Ameri- 



88 GENERAL METHOD. 

can Union could have been preserved to the present time 
without the railroad. Railroads and telegraphs have made 
our vast country, both for political and for social pur- 
poses, more snug and compact than little Switzerland was 
in the middle ages or New England a century ago." The 
analogy between the realm of government and of knowl- 
edge is not at all complete but it suggests at least the 
change which is imperatively called for in education. In 
education as well as in commerce there must be trunk 
Hnes of thought which bring the will as monarch of the 
mind into close communication with all the resources of 
knowledge and experience. 

Besides the central trunk lines of knowledge in his- 
tory and natural science there are branches of study 
which are tributary to them, which serve also as con- 
necting chains between more important subjects. Read- 
ing for instance is largely a relative study. Not only is 
the art of reading merely a preparation for a better ap- 
preciation of history, geography, arithmetic, etc., but 
even the subject matter of reading lessons is now made 
largely tributary to other studies. The supplementary 
readers consist exclusively of interesting matter bearing 
upon geography, history and natural science. It is a 
fact that reading is becoming more and more a relative 
study, and selections are regularly made to bear on other 
school work. V Geography especially serves to establish a 
network of connexions between other kinds of knowledge. 
It is a very important supplement to history. In fact 
history cannot dispense with its help. Geography lessons 
are full of natural science, as with plants, animals, rocks, 
climate, inventions, machines and races. Indeed there 
are few if any school studies w^hich should not be brought 
into close and important relations to geography. Again 



CONCENTRATION. 89 

the more important historical and scientific branches not 
only receive valuable aid from the tributary studies but 
they abundantly supply such aid in return. Language 
lessons should receive all their subject matter from his- 
tory and natural science. While the language lessons are 
working up such rich and interesting materials for pur- 
poses of oral and written language, the more important 
branches are also illustrated and enriched by the new 
historical and scientific subjects thus incidentally treated. 

An examination of these mutal relations and courte- 
sies between studies may discover to us the fact that we 
are now unconsciously or thoughtlessly duplicating the 
work of education to a surprising extent. For example, 
by isolating language lessons and cutting them off from 
communication with history, geography and natural sci- 
ence, we make a double or triple series of lessons necessary 
where a single series would answer the purpose. More- 
over by excluding an interesting subject matter derived 
from other studies the interest and mental life awakened 
by language lessons are reduced to a minimum. Interest 
is not only awakened by well selected matter taken from 
other branches but the relationships themselves between 
studies, whether of cause and effect as between history 
and geography, or of resemblance as between the classi- 
fications in botany and grammar — the relations them- 
selves are matters of unusual interest to children. 

Many teachers have begun to realize in some degree 
the value of these relations, their effect in enlivening 
studies and the better articulation of all kinds of knowl- 
edge in the mind. But as yet all attempts among us to 
properly relate studies are but weak and ineffective ap- 
proaches toward the solution of the great problem of con- 
centration. The links that now bind studies together in 



90 GENERAL METHOD. 

our work are largely accidental and no great stress has 
been laid upon their value, but if concentration is grap- 
pled with in earnest it involves relations at every step. 
Not only are the principal and tributary branches of 
knowledge brought into proper conjunction but there is 
constant forethought and afterthought to bring each new 
topic into the company of its kindred near and remote. 
The mastery of any topic or subject is not clear and sat- 
isfactory till the grappling hooks that bind it to the other 
kinds of knowledge are securely fastened. 

Concentration on a large scale and with consistent 
thoroughness has been attempted in recent years by the 
scholars and teachers of the Herbart school. It is based 
upon moral character as the highest aim, and upon a cor- 
relation of studies which attributes a high moral value to 
historical knowledge and consequently places a series of 
historical materials in the centre of the school course. 
The ability of the school to affect moral character is not 
limited to the personal influence of the teacher and to 
the discipline and daily conduct of the children, but 
instruction itself by illustrating and implanting moral 
ideas, and by closely relating all other kinds of knowl- 
edge to the historical series, can powerfully affect moral 
tendency and strength. If historical matter of the most 
interesting and valuable kind be selected for the central 
series, and the natural sciences and formal studies be 
closely associated with it, there will be harmony and 
union between the culture elements of the school course. 

The Culture Epochs. 
The problem that confronts us at the outset, when 
preparing a plan of concentration, is how to select the 
best historical (moral educative) materials, which are to 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 91 

serve as the central series of the course. The cuUicre 
epochs (cultur-historische Stufen) are, according to the 
Herbartians, the key to the situation. (This subject was 
briefly discussed under Interest.) 

According to the theory of the culture epochs^ the 
child, in its growth from infancy to maturity, is an epi- 
tome of the world's history and growth in a profoundly 
significant sense for the purpose of education. From the 
earliest history of society and of arts, from the first 
simple family and tribal relations and from the time of 
the primitive industries, there has been a series of up- 
ward steps toward our present state of culture (social, 
political and economic life). What relation the leading 
epochs of progress in the race bear to the steps of change 
and growth in children has become a matter of great 
interest in education. The assumption of the culture 
ep>ochs is that the growth of moral and secular ideas in 
the race, represented at its best, is similar to their 
growth in children and that children may find in the 
representative historical periods select materials for 
moral and intellectual nurture and a natural access to 
an understanding of our present condition of society. 
The culture epochs are those representative periods in 
history which are supposed to embody the elements of 
culture suited to train the young upon. Goethe says, 
"Childhood must always begin again at the first and 
pass through the epochs of the world's culture." Her- 
bart says, "The whole of the past survives in each of 
us," and again, "The receptivity (of the child) changes 
continually with progress in years. It is the function of 
the teacher to see to it that these modifications advance 
steadily in agreement with these changes (in the world's 
history)." Ziller has attempted more fully to "justify 



93 GENERAL METHOH. 

this culture-historical course of instruction on the ground 
of a certain predisposition of the child's mental growth 
for this course." Again, "We are to let children pass 
through the culture development of mankind with accel- 
erated speed." Herbart says, " The treasure of advice 
and warning, of precept and principle, of transmitted 
laws and institutions, which earlier generations have 
prepared and handed down to the later, belongs to the 
strongest of psychological forces." That is, choice his- 
torical illustrations produce a weighty effect upon the 
minds of children. 

x^ The culture epochs imply an intimate union between 
history and natural scievice, the two main branches of 
knowledge, at every step. The isolation between these 
studies, which has often appeared and is still strong, is 
unnatural and does violence to the unity of education 
historically considered. Men at all times have had phys- 
ical nature in and around them. Every child is an inti- 
mate blending of historical and physical (natural science) 
elements. The culture epochs illustrate a constant change 
and expansion of history and natural science together and 
in harmony (despite the conflict between them). As men 
have progressed historically and socially from age to age 
their interpretation of nature has been modified with 
growing discovery, insight, invention and utilization of 
her resources. Children also pass through a series of 
metamorphoses which are both physical and psycholog- 
ical, changing temper and mental tendency as the body 
increases in vigor and strength. 

The culture epochs, by beginning well back in history 
and tracing up the steps of progress in their origin and 
growth pave the way for a clear insight into our present 
state of culture, which is a complex of historial and nat- 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 93 

ural science elements. It is comparatively easy for us 
to see that to understand the present political, economic 
and social conditions of the United States we are com- 
pelled to go back to the early settlements with their sim- 
ple surroundings and slowly trace up the growth and in- 
creasing complexity of government, religion, commerce, 
manufactures and social life. The theory of the culture 
epochs implies that the child began where primitive man 
began, feels as he felt and advances as he advanced, only 
with more rapid strides, that as his physique is the heredi- 
tary outcome of thousands of years of history and his 
physical growth the epitome of that development, so his 
mental progress is related to the mind progress of his 
ancestry. They go still further and assume that the 
subject matter of the leading epochs is so well adapted to 
the changing phases and impulses of child life that there 
is a strong predisposition in children in favor of this 
course and that the series of historical object lessons stirs 
the strongest intellectual and moral interests into life. 

As a theory the culture epochs may seem too loose 
and unsubstantial to serve as the basis for such a serious 
undertakino' as the education of children to moral charac- 
ter. The real test, fortunately, of the value of this theory 
is not so much in a general argument as in the application 
of the materials selected by it to school problems. 

There are however certain limits to the theory of race 
progress that need to be drawn at once. It is easy to 
perceive that not all races have left such epochs behind 
them, because some are still in barbarism, others have 
advanced to a considerable height and then retrograded. 
Of those which have advanced with more or less stead- 
iness for two thousand years, like England, France and 
Germany, not every period of their history contains val- 



94 GENERAL METHOD. 

uable culture elements. The gi^eat epochs are not clearly- 
distinguishable in their origin and ending. Again, only 
those periods whose deeds, spirit and tendency have been 
well preserved by history or, still better, have found ex- 
pression in the work of some great poet or literary artist, 
can supply for children the best educative material. 

The typical epochs of the world's struggle and pro- 
gress, as reflected in the literary masterpieces of great 
writers, are the educative centres for the school. The 
history of each nation that has had a progressive civili- 
zation contains such elements and masterpieces. It 
would be fortunate for each nation if it could find first in 
its own history all such leading epochs and the corre- 
sponding materials. Then it could draw upon the his- 
torical and literary resources of other countries to com- 
plete and round out the horizon of thought. 

Ziller, as a disciple of Herbart, was the first to lay 
out a course of historical study for the common school 
based upon the culture epochs. Since religious instruc- 
tion has always been an important study in German 
schools, he was able to establish a double historical series 
throughout the eight grades of the common school; the 
first scriptural, representing the chief epochs of Jewish 
history from the time of Abraham to the end of Christ's 
ministry, the second, national German history from the 
early traditional stories of Saxony and Thuringia to the 
Napoleonic wars and the entry of Emperor William into 
Paris in 1871. It should be remarked that in the first 
and second grades fairy stories and Robinson Crusoe are 
used and the regular historical series does not begin till 
the third grade. The two series of sacred and profane 
history are designed to illustrate for each grade corre- 
sponding epochs of national history, both Jewish and 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 95 

German. In the fourth grade, for instance, the Bible 
history from the time of Moses to Solomon corresponds 
to the period represented by the Nibelmigen song in 
German tradition. 

For each grade is selected a body of classical, his- 
torical materials representing a great period of German 
as well as Jewish life, and especially suited to interest 
the children and illustrate morals. A full course for the 
eight grades of the common schools with this double his- 
torical series as a nucleus, has been carefully worked out 
and applied in a number of German schools. 

The Jewish and German historical materials, which 
are made the moral-educative basis of the common school 
by the Herbartians, can be of no service to us except by 
way of example. Neither sacred nor German history can 
form any important part of an American course of study. 
Religious instruction has been delegated to the church 
and German history touches us indirectly if at all. The 
epochs of history from which American schools must draw 
are chiefly those of the United States and Great Britain. 
France, Germany, Italy and Greece may furnish some 
collateral matter, as the story of Tell, of Siegfried, of 
Alaric and Ulysses, but the leading epochs must be those 
of our own national history. 

Has the English-speaking race in North America 
passed through a series of historical epochs which, on ac- 
count of their moral-educative worth, deserve to stand in 
the centre of a common school course? Is this history 
adapted to cultivate the highest moral and intellectual 
qualities of children as they advance from year to year? 
There are few if any single nations whose history could fur- 
nish a favorable answer to this question. The English in 
America began their career so late in the world's history 



96 GENERAL METHOD. 

and with such advantages of previous European culture 
that several of the earlier historical epochs are not repre- 
sented in our country. But perhaps G-reat Britain and 
Europe will furnish the earlier links of a chain whose 
later links were firmly welded in America. 

The history of our country since the first settlements 
less than three hundred years ago is by far the best epi- 
tome of the world's progress in its later phases that the 
life of any nation presents. On reaching the new world 
the settlers began a hand-to-hand, tooth-and-nail conflict 
with hard conditions of climate, soil and savage. The 
simple basis of physical existence had to be fought for on 
the hardest terms. The fact that everything had to be 
built up anew from small beginnings on a virgin soil gave 
an opportunity to trace the rise of institutions from their 
infancy in a Puritan dwelling or in a town meeting till 
they spread and consolidated over a continent. In this 
short time the people have grown from little scattered 
settlements to a nation, have experienced an undreamed- 
of niaterial expansion, have passed through a rapid suc- 
cession of great political struggles and have had an 
unrivaled evolution of agriculture, commerce, manufac- 
tures, inventions, education and social life. All the ele- 
ments of society, material, religious, political and social 
have started with the day of small things and have grown 
up together. 

There is little in our history to ap.peal to children be- 
low the fourth grade, that is, below ten years; but from 
the beginning of the fourth grade on American history 
is rich in moral-educative materials of the best quality 
and suited to children. We are able to distinguish four 
principal epochs: 1. The age of pioneers, the ocean nav- 
igators like Columbus, Drake and Magellan, and the ex- 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 97 

plorers of the continent like Smith, Champlain, LaSalle 
and Fremont. 2. The period of settlements, of colonial 
history and of French and Indian wars. 3. The Revolu- 
tion and life under the Articles of Confederation till the 
adoption of the Constitution. 4. Self-government under 
the Union and the growth and strengthening of the fed- 
eral idea. While drawing largely upon general history 
for a full and detailed treatment of a few important top- 
ics in each of these epochs we should make a still more 
abundant use of the biographical and literary materials 
furnished by each. The concentration of school studies, 
with a historical series suggested by the culture epochs 
as a basis, would utilize our American history, biogra- 
phy and literature in a manner scarcely dreamed of here- 
tofore. 

We shall attempt to illustrate briefly this concentra- 
tion of studies about materials selected from one of the 
culture epochs. Take, for example, the age of pioneers 
from which to select historical subject-matter for chil- 
dren of the fourth and fifth grades. It comprehends the 
biographies of eminent navigators and explorers, pioneers 
on land and sea. It describes the important undertak- 
ings of Columbus, Magellan, Cabot, Raleigh, Drake and 
others, who were daring leaders at the great period of 
maritime discovery. The pioneer explorers of New Eng- 
land and the other colonies bring out strongly marked 
characters in the preparatory stage of our earliest his- 
tory. Smith, Champlain, Winthrop, Penn, Oglethorpe, 
Stuyvesant and Washington are examples. In the Mis- 
sissippi valley De Soto, La Salle, Boone, Lincoln and 
Robertson are types. Still farther west Lewis and 
Clarke, and the pioneers of California complete this his- 
torical epoch in a series of great enterprises. 



98 GENERAL METHOD. 

Most of them are pioneers into new regions beset with 
dangers of wild beasts, savages and sickness. A few are 
settlers, the first to build cabins and take possession of 
land that was still claimed by red men and still covered 
with forests. The men named were leaders of small 
bands sent out to explore rivers and forests or to drive 
out hostile claimants at the point of the sword. Any 
one who has tried the effect of these stories upon children 
of the fourth grade will grant that they touch a deep na- 
tive interest. But this must be a genuine and permanent 
interest to be of educative value. The moral quality in 
this interest is its virtue. Standish, Boone, La Salle and 
the rest were stalwart men, whose courage was keenly 
and powerfully tempered. They were leaders of men by 
virtue of moral strength and superiority. Their deeds 
have the stamp of heroism and in approving them the 
moral judgments of children are exercised upon noble 
material. These men and stories constitute an epoch in 
civilization because they represent that state which just 
precedes the first form of settled society. In fact some 
of the stories fall in the transition stage, where men 
followed the plow and wielded tVie woodman's axe, or 
turned to the warpath as occasion required. In every 
part of the United States there has been such a period 
and something corresponding to it in other countries. 
We are prepared to assume therefore that these histor- 
ical materials arouse a strong interest, implant moral 
ideas and illustrate a typical epoch. They are also very 
real. These men, especially the land pioneers, were our 
own predecessors, traversing the same rivers, forests and 
prairies where we now live and enjoy the fruits of their 
hardihood and labor. 

Let us suppose that such a historical series of stories 
has its due share of time on the school program and that 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 99 

the stories are properly presented by the teacher and 
orally reproduced by the pupils, into what relations shall 
the other studies of the school enter to these historical 
materials ? How shall language, reading, geography, 
natural science and arithmetic be brought into the close 
relation to history required by the idea of concentration. 
The oral reproduction of the stories by the children is 
the best possible oral language drill, while their partial 
written review is the basis of much of the regular com- 
position work. Language lessons on isolated and uncon- 
nected topics can be thus entirely omitted. The element 
of interest will be added to oral and written language 
lessons by the use of such lively stories. 
\ Readiyig is chiefly tributary to the historical series. 
Such selections should be made for reading lessons as will 
throw additional light upon pioneer history and its re- 
lated geopraphy. Descriptions of natural scenery and 
choice selections from our best historians, as Irving and 
Bancroft, describing events or men of this period, should 
be used for reading lessons. Especially the best literary 
selections are to be utilized, as The Landing of the Pil- 
grims, Webster's and Everett's orations at Plymouth, 
Evangeline and Hiawatha, Indian legends and life, Miles 
Standish, The Knickerbocker history, and some of the 
original papers and letters of the early settlers. What- 
ever poems or prose selections from our best literature 
are found to bear directly or indirectly upon pioneer 
events will add much interest and beauty to the whole 
subject. A second series of reading materials for these 
grades would be those masterpieces and traditions of 
European literature, which are drawn from a correspond- 
ing pioneer epoch in those countries. For example, Sieg- 
fried in Germany, Alaric in Italy, and Ulysses in Greece. 



100 GENERAL METHOD. 

A selection of reading material along these lines would 
exhibit much variety of prose and poetry, history and 
geography. Unity would be given to it by the spirit and 
labors of a typical age and an intimate relation to history 
at all points established. 

Geography has an equally close relation to history 
stories. For these grades geography and history cover 
the same geographical regions. Instead of being totally 
isolated from each other they should be purposely laid out 
on parallel lines with interlacing topics. North America 
and the Atlantic ocean are the field of action in both 
cases. These maritime explorers opened up the geogra- 
phy of this hemisphere at its most interesting stage. No 
part of the Atlantic ocean or of its North American 
coasts was overlooked by the navigators. The climate, 
vegetation, and people upon its islands and coasts were 
curious objects to European adventurers. The first 
pioneers surveyed the eastern coast and adjacent interior 
of a new continent with its bays, rivers, forests, and 
mountains. The stories themselves are not intelligible 
without full geographical explanations, and the personal 
interest in the narratives throws a peculiar charm upon 
the geography. 

The Mississippi valley is a great field for both 
history and geography. It is one of the striking phys- 
ical features of North America and the best of stories 
find their setting in this environment. Not a great 
river of this region but is the scene of one of the stor- 
ies. The lakes and streams were the natural highways 
of the explorers and settlers. The mountains obstructed 
their way, presenting obstacles but not limits to their 
enterprise. The great forests housed their game, con- 
cealed their enemies, and had to be cut down to make 
space for their homes and cornfields. The prairies farther 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 101 

west were a camping ground for them as well as for the 
deer and buffalo. There are no important physical fea- 
tures of the great valley that are not touched more or 
less in detail by the stories. It is the work of the geog- 
raphy of this year to enlarge and complete the pictures 
suggested by the stories, to multiply details, to compare 
and arrano-e and to associate with these the facts of our 
present political and commercial geography. 
\ The relation between history and geography is so 
intimate that it requires some pedagogical skill to deter- 
mine which of the two should take the lead. But we 
have already adjudged the history to be by far the more 
important of the two. Its subject matter is of greater 
intrinsic interest to children, and as it already stands in 
the commanding center of the school course, we are dis- 
posed to bring the geography lessons into close depend- 
ence upon it. 

In these grades nat^iral science or nature study form 
a necessary complement to the circle of historical and 
geographical topics treated. Many interesting natural 
science subjects suggested by history and geography can 
not be dealt with satisfactorily in those studies, for 
example, the palm-tree, the squirrel, the mariner's com- 
pass. Natural science studies begin naturally with the 
home neighborhood, with its plants, trees, animals, rocks, 
inventions and products. But having surveyed and 
learned many of these things at home in his earlier 
years the child is prepared, when geography and history 
begin, to extend his natural science information to the 
larger geographical regions. 

The history, stories and geography suggest a large 
number of natural science topics so that there is abun- 
dant choice of materials while remaining in close con- 

—7 



102 GENERAL METHOD. 

nexion with those studies. The vegetable and animal 
life and products of the sea are suggested by the voyages, 
such as fishes, dolphins, whales, sea-birds, shells. Also 
the construction of ships, the mariner's compass and 
astronomical topics. 

The stories of the land pioneers open up a still richer 
field of natural science study for the common schools. 
Among animals are the beaver, otter, squirrel, coon, 
bear, fox, wildcat, deer, buffalo, domestic animals, wild 
turkeys, ducks, pigeons, eagle, hawk, wild bees, cat fish, 
sword-fish, turtle, alligator and many more. Among 
native products and fruits are mentioned corn, pumpkins, 
beans, huckleberries, grapes, strawberries, cranberries, 
tobacco, paw paw, mulberry, haw, plum, apple and per- 
simmon. Of trees are the oak, hickory, walnut, cypress, 
pine, birch, beech and others. Tools, instruments and 
inventions are mentioned with their uses, as guns, Indian 
weapons, compass, thermometer, barometer, boats, car- 
penter's tools; also, the uses of iron, lead, leather and 
many of the simple arts and economies of life, such as 
weaving, tempering of metals, tanning and cooking. 
The natural wonders of the country, such as falls, caves, 
hot springs, canons, salt licks, plains, interior deserts 
and salt lakes, kinds of rocks, soils, forests and other 
vegetation, the phenomena of the weather and differences 
in climate are referred to. All these and other topics 
from the broad realm of nature are suggested, any of 
which may serve as the starting point for a series of 
science lessons. 

How far the natural science lessons can heed the 
suggestions of history and geography and still follow out 
and develop important science principles is one of the 
great problems for solution. It would seem that the 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 103 

large number of natural science topics touched upon by 
the history, when increased by the variety of home ob- 
jects in nature and by still others called up by the geog- 
raphy work of these years, would give sufficient variety to 
the natural science work of the same period. By omitting 
some of these topics and enlarging upon others, developing 
the notions of classes and principles so far as is desirable, 
the natural science lessons may be made sufficiently sci- 
entific without losing the close relation to the central 
subject matter for the year. There is no doubt but the 
science lessons will add greatly to many topics suggested 
by the stories and will bring the whole realm of nature 
into close relation to history and geography. 

The subjects thus far discussed, that may be brought 
into close relation to the central stories, are oral and writ- 
ten language, reading and literature, geography and the 
natural sciences. The connexions between these branches 
are numerous and strong at every step. 

Arithmetic^ finally, seems to stand like an odd sheep 
among the studies. It is certainly the least social of the 
common school branches. While avoiding all forced con- 
nexion between arithmetic and other studies, we shall 
find some points where the relations are simple and clear. 
Children in the first grade should see numbers in the 
leaves, flowers, trees and animals they study. At the 
beginning of the first grade this would be a good in- 
formal way of beginning numbers. The value of objects 
in first and second grade number is so great that it is 
only a question as to how far the objects suggested by 
other lessons may be used. 

But we are speaking of concentration in the fourth 
and fifth grades. In the stories and in geography we 
deal with journeys up great 'rivers, with the height of 



104 GENERAL METHOD 

mountains, with the extent of valleys and lakes, with 
reo-ular forts, mounds and enclosures, with companies 
and bodies of men, with railroads, cities and agricultural 
products, and with many other topics which suggest 
excellent practical problems in arithmetic for these 
grades. All such careful arithmetical computations add 
clearness and definiteness to historical and geographical 
ideas. The natural sciences have been so little systemat- 
ically taught in our common schools, that we are scarcely 
able to realize what connexion may be made between 
them and arithmetic. We know that in the advanced 
study and applications of some of the natural sciences, 
mathematics is an essential part. 

A brief retrospect will make it appear that the history 
stories, natural sciences, and geography, with the more 
formal sudies, such as reading, language, and arithmetic, 
may be brought into a close organic harmony. Each of 
them depends upon and throws light upon the other, and 
while the connexions are natural, not forced, there is a 
concentration upon the central historical and literary 
matter that makes moral character the highest aim of 
teaching. Since real -concentration is practically a new 
educational undertaking, it involves a number of unsolved 
subordinate problems; for instance, how far shall science 
lessons, grammar, and geography follow their own princi- 
ples of selection, based on the nature and scientific ar- 
rangement of their materials, while keeping up the de- 
pendence upon and connexions with the central subject. 
But if concentration is a true principle of education, it is 
evident that none of these problems can be solved until 
concentration has been agreed upon and made funda- 
mental. In this case those teachers who are trying to 
lay out courses of study in p-^^ography, natural science, 



CULTURE EPOCHS. 105 

or history without regard to the relation of studies to 
each other, will have most of their work to do over 
again. 

A little reflexion will convince us perhaps that a year's 
work thus concentrated will produce a much more power- 
ful and lasting impression upon children than the loose 
aggregation of facts which is usually collected during a 
year's work. Not only will the moral effect be intensified 
but the close dependence of each study upon the others 
will be perceptibly felt as valuable and stimulating to the 
children. 

If now we can conceive of the eight grades of the 
common school as eight stages passing naturally from 
one to another, each a unit composed of a net-work of 
well related facts, but the epochs closely related to each 
other in a rising series, from childhood almost to matur- 
ity, or from the beginning of history up to the present 
state of culture, we shall be able also to think of educa- 
tion as a succession of powerful culture influences, that 
will bring the child to our present standpoint fully con- 
scious of his duties and surroundings. 



lOG GENERAL METHOD. 



CHAPTER V. 



APPERCEPTION. 

We have observed how interest aids concentration by 
bringing all kinds of knowledge into close living relation 
to the feelings. Interest incentives are put into every 
kind of information to stimulate the will, which in turn 
unifies all the mind activities and brings them under con- 
trol. The culture epochs also contribute powerfully to 
concentration by furnishing a principle for the selection 
of a series of historical masterpieces which become the 
rallying-points for all educative efforts. A still more 
powerful and persistent means of concentration is found 
in applying the principle of apperception. Every day and 
hour of school labors illustrate its value and teachers 
should find in it a constant antidote to faulty methods. 

Apperception may be roughly defined at first as the 
process of acquiring new ideas by the aid of old ideas al- 
ready in the mind. It makes the acquisition of new 
knowledge easier and quicker. Not that there is any 
easy road to learning, but there is a natural process which 
greatly accelerates the progress of acquisition, just as it is 
better to follow a highway over a rough country than to 
betake one's self to the stumps and brush. For example, 
if one is familiar with peaches, apricots will be quickly 
understood as a similar kind of fruit, even though a little 
strange. A person who is familiar with electrical ma- 
chinery will easily interpret the meaning and purpose of 
every part of a new electrical plant. One may perceive 
a new object without understanding it, but to apperceive 



APPERCEPTION. 107 

it is to interpret its meaning by the aid of similar familiar 
notions. 

If one examines a type-vyrit'er for the first time, it will 
take some pains and effort to miderstand its construction 
and use, but after examining a Remington, another kind 
will be more easily understood, because the principle of the 
first interprets that of the second. Suppose the Steppes 
of Russia are mentioned for the first time to a class. The 
word has little or no meaning or perhaps suggests erro- 
neously a succession of stairs. But we remark that the 
steppes are like the prairies and plains to the west of the 
Mississippi River, covered with grass and fed on by herds. 
By awakening a familiar notion already in the mind and 
bringing it distinctly to the front, the new thing is easily 
understood. Again a boy goes to town and sees a 
banana for the first time, and asks. "What is that? I 
never saw anything like that. " He thinks he has no class 
of things to which it belongs, no place to put it. His 
father answers that it is to eat like an orange or a pear, 
and its whole significance is at once plain by the reference 
to something familiar. 

Again, two men, the one a machinist and the other an 
observer unskilled in machines, visit the machinery hall 
of an exposition. The machinist observes a new inven- 
tion and finds in it a new application of an old principle. 
As he passes along from one machine to another he is 
much interested in noting new devices and novel appli- 
ances and at the end of an hour he leaves the hall with a 
mind enriched. The other observer sees the same ma- 
chines and their parts but does not detect the principle 
of their construction. His previous knowledge of 
machines is not sufficient to give him the clue to their ex- 
planation. After an hour of uninterested observation 



108 GENERAL METHOD. 

he leaves the hall with a confused notion of shafts, wheels, 
cogs, bands, etc., but with no greater insight into the 
principles of machinery. Why has one man learned so 
much and the other nothing ? Because the machinist's 
previous experience served as an interpreter and ex- 
plained these new contrivances, while the other had no 
sufficient previous knowledge and so acquired nothing 
new. <'To him that hath shall be given." In the act of 
apperception the old ideas, dwelling in the mind, are not 
to be regarded as dead treasures stored away and only 
occasionally drawn out and used by a purposed effort of 
the memory, but they are living forces which have the 
active power of seizing and appropriating new ideas. 
Lazarus says they stand "like well-armed men in the 
inner stronghold of the mind ready to sally forth and 
overcome or make serviceable whatever shows itself at 
the portals of sense. " It is then through the active aid 
of familiar ideas that new things find an introduction to 
soul life. If old friends go out to meet the strangers and 
welcome them, there will be an easy entrance and a quick 
adoption into the new home. But frequently these old 
friends who stand in the background of our thoughts 
must be awakened and called to the front. They must 
stand as it were on tip toe ready to welcome the stranger. 
For if they lie asleep in the penetralia of the home the 
new comers may approach and pass by for lack of a wel- 
come. It is often necessary therefore for the teacher to re- 
vive old impressions, to call up previously acquired knowl- 
edge and to put it in readiness to receive and welcome the 
new. The success with which this is done is often the 
difference between good and poor teaching. 

We are now prepared for a more accurate definition 
of apperception. ' 'The transformation of a newer (weaker) 



APPERCEPTION. 109 

concept by means of an older one surpassing the former 
in power and inner organization bears the name of apper- 
ception, in contrast to the unaltered reception of the 
same perception." (Lttrdner's Psychol, p. 124, trans, by 
De Gai^mo.) 

Lindner remarks further, "Apperception is the re- 
action of the old against the new — in it is revealed the 
preponderance which the older, firmer, and more self- 
contained concept groups have in contrast to the con- 
cepts which have just entered consciousness." Again, 
"It is a kind of process of condensation of thought and 
brings into the mental life a certain stability and firm- 
ness in that it subordinates new to older impressions, 
puts everything in its right place and in its right relation 
to the whole, and in this way works at that organic 
formation of our consciousness which we call culture.''' 
(Linder p. 126.) 

"Apperception may be defined as that interaction 
between two similar ideas or thought-complexes in 
the course of which the weaker, unorganized, isolated 
idea or thought-complex is incorporated into the richer, 
better digested, and more firmly compacted one." (Lange, 
Apperception p. 13.) 

Sometimes older ideas or thought masses, being clear, 
strong, and well-digested receive a new impression to 
modify and appropriate it. This is especially true where 
opinions have been carefully formed after thought and 
deliberation. A well- trained political economist, for ex- 
ample, when approaching a new theory or presentation 
of it by a George or Bellamy, meets it with all the 
resources of a well-stored, thoughtful mind and admits 
it, if at all, in a modified form to his system of thought. 
Sometimes however a new theory, which strikes the mind 



110 GENERAL METHOD. 

with great clearness and vigor, is able to make a powerful 
assault upon previous opinions and perhaps modify or 
overturn them. This is the more apt to be the case if 
one's previous ideas have been weak and undecided. In 
the interaction between the old and new the latter then 
become the apperceiving forces. Upon the untrained 
or poorly-equipped mind a strong argument has a more 
decisive effect than it may justly deserve. New ideas, 
especially those coming directly through the senses, are 
often more vivid and attractive than similar old ones. 
For this reason they usually occupy greater attention 
and prominence at first than later when the old ideas 
have begun to revive and reassert themselves. Old ideas 
usually have the advantage over the new in being better 
organized, more closely connected in series and groups, 
and having been often repeated, they acquire a certain 
permanent ascendency in the thoughts. In this inter- 
action between similar notions, old and new, the differ- 
ences at first arrest attention, then gradually sink into 
the background, while the strong points of resemblance 
begin to monopolize the thought and bind the notions 
into a unity. 

The use of familiar notions in acquiring an insight 
into new things is a natural tendency or drift of the mind. 
As soon as we see somethino; new and desire to under- 
stand it, at once we involuntarily begin to ransack 
our old stock of ideas to discover anything in our previ- 
ous experience which corresponds to this or is like it. 
For whatever is like it or has an analogy to it, or serves 
the same uses, will explain this new thing, though the 
two objects be in other points essentially different. We 
are, in short, constantly falling back upon our old expe- 
riences and classifications for the explanation of new ob- 
jects that appear to us. 



APPERCEPTION. Ill 

So far is this true that the most ordinary things can 
only be explained in the light of experience. When John 
Smith wrote a note to his companions at Jamestown and 
thus communicated his desires to them, it was unintelli- 
gible to the Indians. They had no knowledge of writing 
and looked on the marks as magical. When Columbus' 
ships first appeared on the coast of the new world, the 
natives looked upon them as great birds. They had 
never seen large sailing vessels. To vary the illustra- 
tion, the art of reading^ so easy to a student, is the ac- 
cumulated result of a long collection of knowledge and 
experience. There is an unconscious employment of ap- 
perception in the practical affairs of life that is of interest. 
We often see a person at a distance and by some slight 
characteristic of motion form or dress, recognize him at 
once. From this slight trace we picture to ourselves the 
person in full and say we saw him in the street. Sitting 
in my room at evening I hear the regular passenger train 
come in. The noise alone suggests the engine, cars, con- 
ductor, passengers and all the train complete. As a 
matter of fact I saw nothing at all but have before my 
mind the whole picture. On Sunday morning I see some 
one enter a familiar church door, and going on my way 
the whole picture of church, congregation, pastor, music 
and sermon come distinctly to my mind. Only a passing 
glance at one person entering suggests the whole scene. 
In looking at a varied landscape we see many things 
which the sensuous eye alone would not detect, distances, 
perspective and relative size, position and nature of ob- 
jects. This apperceptive power is of vast importance in 
practical life as it leads to quick judgment and action, 
when personal examination into details would be impos- 
sible. 



112 GENERAL METHOD. 

The general plan of all studies is based upon this 
notion of acquiring knowledge by the assistance of accu- 
mulated funds. In AritJmietic it would be folly to begin 
with long division before the multiplication table is 
learned. In Geometry^ later propositions depend upon 
earlier principles and demonstrations. In Latin^ vocab- 
ularies and inflections and syntactical relations must be 
mastered before readiness in the use of language is 
reached. And so it is to a large degree in the general 
plan of all studies. In spite of this no principle is more 
commonly violated in daily recitations than that of ap- 
perception. Its value is self-evident as a principle for 
the arrangement of topics in any branch of study, but it 
is overlooked in daily lessons. Instead of this new knowl- 
edge is acquired by a thoughtless memory drill. 

In apperception we never pass from the known to 
things which are entirely new. Absolutely new knowl- 
edge is gained by perception or intuition. When an older 
person meets with something totally new, he either does 
not notice it or it staggers him. Apperception does not 
take place. In many cases we are disturbed or frightened, 
as children by some new or sudden noise or object. But 
most so-called new things bear sufficient resemblance to 
things seen before to admit of explanation. Strange as 
the sights of a Chinese city might appear, we should still 
know that we were in a city. In most "new" objects of 
observation or study, the familiar parts greatly prepon- 
derate over the unfamiliar. In a new reading lesson, for 
example, most of the words and ideas are well known, only 
an occasional word requires explanation and that by using 
familiar illustrations. The flood of our familiar and oft- 
repeated ideas sweeps on like a great river, receiving here 
and there from either side a tributary stream, that is 
swallowed up in its waters without perceptible increase. 



APPERCEPTION. 113 

So strong is the apperceiving force of familiar notions 
that they drag far-distant scenes in geography and his- 
tory into the home neighborhood and locate them there. 
The imagination works in conjunction with the apper- 
ceiving faculty and constructs real pictures. Children 
are otherwise inclined to substitute one thing for another 
by imagination. With boys and girls, geographical ob. 
jects about home are often converted by fancy into rep- 
resentatives of distant places. It is related of Byron 
that while reading in childhood the story of the Trojan 
war, he localized all the places in the region of his home. 
An old hill and castle looking toward the plain and the 
sea were his Troy. The stream flowing through the 
plain was the Simois. The places of famous conflicts 
between the Trojans and Greeks were located. So vivid 
were the pictures which these home scenes gave to the 
child that years later in visiting Asia Minor and the 
sight of the real Troy he was not so deeply impressed as 
in his boyhood. A German professor relates that he and 
his companions, while reading the Indian stories of 
Cooper, located the important scenes in the hills and val- 
leys about Eisenach in the Thuringian mountains. Many 
other illustrations of the same imaginative tendency to 
substitute home objects for foreign ones are given. But 
whether or not this experience is true of us all, it is cer- 
tain that we can form no idea of foreign places and events 
except as we construct the pictures out of the fragments 
of things that we have known. What we have seen of 
rivers, lands, and cities must form the materials for pic- 
turing to ourselves distant places. 

Important conclusions drawn from a study of apper- 
ception : 



114 GENERAL METHOD. 

1. Value of previous knoioledge. If knowledge once 
acquired is so valuable we are first of all urged to make 
the acquisition permanent. Thorough mastery and fre- 
quent reviews are necessary to make knowledge stick. 
Careless and superficial study is injurious. It is some- 
times carelessly remarked by those who are supposed to 
be wise in educational matters that it makes no differ- 
ence how much we forget if we only have proper drill 
and training to study. That is, how we study is more 
important than what we learn. But viewed in the light 
of apperception, acquired knowledge should be retained 
and used. For it unlocks the door to more knowledge. 
Thorough mastery and retention of the elements of knowl- 
edge in the different branches is the only solid road to 
progress. In this connexion we can see the importance 
of learning only what is worth remembering^ what will 
prove a valuable treasure in future study. In the selec- 
tion of material for school studies, therefore, we must 
keep in mind knowledge which, as Comenius says, is of 
solid utility. Having once selected and acquired such 
materials we are next impelled to make constant use of 
them. If the acquisition of new information depends so 
much upon the right use of previous knowledge we are 
called upon to build constantly upon this foundation. 
This is true whether the child's knowledge has been 
acquired at school or at home. In order to make things 
clear and interesting to boys and girls we must refer 
every day to what they have before learned in school and 
out of school. 

Again if we accept this doctrine that old ideas are the 
materials out of which we constantly build bridges across 
into new fields of knowledge we must knoio the children 
better and what store of knowledge they have already 



APPERCEPTION. 115 

acquired. Just as an army marching into a new country 
must know well the country through which it has passed 
and must keep open the line of communication and the 
base of supplies, so the student must always have a safe 
retreat into his past, and a base of supplies to sustain 
him in his onward movements. The tendency is very 
strong for a grade teacher to think that she needs to 
know nothing except the facts to be acquired in her own 
grade. But she should remember that her grade is only 
a station on the highway to learning and life. In teach- 
ing we caD not by any shift dispense with the ideas chil- 
dren have gained at home, at play, in the school and out- 
side of it. This, in connexion with what the child has 
learned in the previous grades, constitutes a stock of 
ideas, a capital, upon which the teacher should freely 
draw in illustrating daily lessons. 

2. The use of our acquired stock of ideas involves a 
constant loorking over of old ideas, and this working-over 
process not only reviews and strengthens past knowledge, 
keeping it from forgetfulness, but it throws new light 
upon it and exposes it to a many-sided criticism. In the 
first place familiar ideas should not be allowed to rest in 
the mind unused. Like tools for service they must be 
kept bright and sharp. One reason why so many of the 
valuable ideas we have acquired have gradually disap- 
peared from the mind is because they remained so long 
unused that they faded out of sight. The old saying 
that "repetition is the mother of studies" needs to be re- 
called and emphasized. By being put in contact with 
new ideas, old notions are seen and appreciated in new 
relations. Facts that have long lain unexplained in the 
mind, suddenly receive a nevj interpretation, a vivid and 
rational meaning. Or the old meaning is intensified and 
vivified by putting a new fact in conjunction with it. 



116 GENERAL METHOD. 

Where the climate and products of the British Isles 
have been studied in political geography, and later on in 
physical geography, the gulf stream is explained in its 
bearings on the climate of western Europe, the whole 
subject of the climate of England is viewed from a new 
and interesting standpoint. In arithmetic, where the 
square of the sum of the two sides of a right angled tri- 
angle is illustrated by an example and later on in geom- 
etry the same proposition is taken up in a different way 
and proved as a universal theorem, new and interesting 
light is thrown upon an old problem of arithmetic. In 
United States history, after the Revolution has been 
studied, the biography of a man like Samuel Adams 
throws much additional and vivid light upon the events 
and actors in Boston and Massachusetts. The life of 
John AdamxS would give a still different view of the same 
great events, just as a city, as seen from different stand- 
points, presents different aspects. 

3. We have thus far shown that new ideas are more 
easily understood and assimilated when they are brought 
into close contact with what we already know; and sec- 
ondly, that our old knowledge is often explained and 
illuminated by new facts brought to bear upon them. 
We may now observe the result of this double action — 
the icelding of old and new into one piece, the close min- 
gling and association of all our knowledge, i. e. , its 
unity. Apperception, therefore, has the same final ten- 
dency that will be observed in the inductive p7X)cess, the 
unification of knowledge, the concentration of all experi- 
ence by uniting its parts into groups and series. The 
smith, in welding together two pieces of iron, heats both 
and then hammers them together into one piece. The 
teacher has something similar to do. He must revive 



APPERCEPTION. 117 

old ideas in the child's mind, then present the new facts 
and bring the two things together while they are still 
fresh, so as to cause them to coalesce. To prove this 
observe how long division may be best taught. Call up 
and review the method of short division, then proceed to 
work a problem in long division calling attention to the 
similar steps and processes in the two, and finally to the 
difference between them. 

The defect of much teaching in children's classes is 
that the teacher does not properly provide for the weld- 
iug together of the new and old. The important prac- 
tical question after all is, whether instructors see to it 
that children recall their previous knowledge. It is nec- 
essary to take special pains in this. Nothing is more 
common than to find children forgetting the very thing 
which, if remembered, would explain the difficult point 
in the lesson. Teachers are often surprised that children 
have forgotten things once learned. But, in an impor- 
tant sense, we encourage children to forget by not calling 
into use their acquisitions. Lessons are learned too 
much, each by itself, without reference to what precedes 
or what follows, or what effect this lesson of to-day may 
have upon things learned a year ago. Putting it briefly, 
children and teachers do not think enough, pondering 
things over in their mind, relating facts with each other, 
and bringing all knowledge into unity, and into a clear 
comprehension. The habit of thougJttf illness engendered 
by a proper combining of old and new, is one of the 
valuable results of a good education. It gives the mind 
a disposition to glance backward and forward, to judge 
of all old ideas from a broader, more intelligent stand- 
point. Thinking everything over in the light of the best 
experience we can bring to bear upon it, prevents us 
from jumping at conclusions. 



118 GENERAL METHOD. 

In this welding process we desire to determine how 
far an actual concentration may take place between school 
studies and the home and outside life of children. The 
stock of ideas and feelings which a child from its infancy 
has gathered from its peculiar history and home sur- 
roundings is the primitive basis of its personality. Its 
thought, feeling and individuality are deeply interwoven 
with home experience. No other set of ideas, later ac- 
quired, lies so close to its heart or is so abiding in its 
memory. The memory of work and play at home, of the 
house, yard, trees and garden, of parents, brothers and 
sisters and in addition to this the experiences connected 
with neighbors and friends, the town and surrounding 
country, the church and its influence, the holidays, games 
and celebrations, all these things lie deeper in the minds 
of children than the facts learned about grammar, geog- 
raphy or history in school. Any plan of education that 
ignores these home-bred ideas, these events, memories and 
sympathies of home and neighborhood life, will make a 
vital mistake. A concentration that keeps in mind only 
the school studies and disregards the rich fund of ideas 
that every child brings from his home must be a failure, 
because it only includes the weaker half of his experience. 
Home knowledge itself does not need to be made a con- 
centrating center, but all its best materials must be 
drawn into the concentrating center of the school. But 
children bring many faulty, mistaken and even vicious 
ideas from their homes. It is well to know the actual 
situation. It is the work of the school at every step, 
while receiving to correct, enlarge or arrange the faulty or 
disordered knowledge brought into the school by children. 
We unconsciously use these materials and depend upon 
them for explaining new lessons, more constantly than 



APPERCEPTION. 119 

we are aware of. In fact if we were wise teachers we 
would consciously make a more frequent use of them and 
in order to render them more valuable take special pains 
to review, correct and arrange them. We would teach 
children to observe more closely and to remember better 
the things they daily see. 

We shall appeciate better the value of home knowl- 
edge if we take note of the direct and constant depend- 
ence of the most important studies upon it. We usually 
think of history as something far away in New England, 
or France, or Egypt. History is mainly a study of the 
actions, customs, homes, and institutions of men in dif- 
ferent countries. But what an abundance of similar facts 
and observations a child has gathered about home before 
he begins the study of history. From his infancy he has 
seen people of all sorts and conditions, rich and poor, 
ignorant and learned, honorable and mean. He has seen 
all sorts of human actions, learned to know their mean- 
ing and to pass judgment upon them. He has seen 
houses, churches, public buildings, trade and commerce, 
and a hundred human institutions. The child has been 
studying human actions and institutions in the concrete 
for a dozen years before he begins to read and recite his- 
tory from books. Without the knowledge thus acquired 
out of school, society, government, and institutions would 
be worse than Greek. Geography as taught in the books 
would be totally foreign and strange but for the abund- 
ance of ideas the child has already picked up about hills, 
streams, roads, travel, storms, trees, animals, and people. 

Natural science lessons must be based on a more care- 
ful study of things already seen about home, rocks and 
streams, flowers and plants, animals wild and tame. 
These with the forests, fields, brooks, seasons, tools and 



120 GENERAL METHOD. 

inventions are the necessary object lessons in natural 
science which can serve daily to illustrate other lessons. 
How near then do the natural science topics geography, 
and history stand to the daily home life of a child! How 
intimate should be the relations which the school should 
establish between the parts of a child's experience! This 
is concentration in the broadest sense. A proper appre- 
ciation of this principle will save us from a number of 
common errors. Besides constantly associating home and 
school knowledge, we shall try to know the home and 
parents better, and the disposition and surroundings of 
each child. We shall be ready at any time to render 
home knowledge more clear and accurate, to correct 
faulty observation and opinion. While the children will 
be encouraged to illustrate lessons from their own expe- 
rience, we shall fall into the excellent habit of explaining 
new and difficult points by a direct appeal to what the 
pupils have seen and understood. In short there will be 
a disposition to draw into the concentrating work of the 
school all the deeper but outside life-experiences which 
form so important an element in the character of every 
person, which however, teachers so often overlook. No 
other institution has such an opportunity or power to 
concentrate knowledge and experience as the school. 

4. Another valuable educative result of apperception, 
cultivated in this manner, is a consciousness of power 
which springs from the ability to make a good use of our 
knowledge. The oftener children become aware that they 
have made a good use of acquired knowledge, the more 
they are encouraged. They see the treasure growing in 
their hands and feel conscious of their ability to use it. 
There is a mental exhilaration like that coming from 
abundant physical strength and health. 



APPERCEPTION. 121 

We may observe that it is one of the means for devel- 
oping that interest which we have laid down as funda- 
mental. It is always a joy to find old information useful 
in explaining new facts. When the principle of appercep- 
tion is fully applied in teaching, the progress from one 
point to another is so gradual and clear that it gives 
pleasure. The clearness and understanding with which 
we receive knowledge adds greatly to our interest in it. 
On the contrary, when the principle of apperception is 
violated and new knowledge is only half understood and 
assimilated, there can be but little feeling of satisfaction. 

Having seen the powerful aid rendered by appercep- 
tion to the steady assimilation and concentration of 
knowledge we are prepared, in the next chapter, to dis- 
cuss the inductive process as a natural trend of the mind 
in acquiring and classifying ideas and thus still further 
aiding concentration by a more scientific arrangement 
and association of our knowledge stores. 



122 GENERAL METHOD. 



CHAPTER VI 



INDUCTION. 

Induction, or the concept-bearing process^ shows the 
tendency of our minds to advance from the inspection of 
particular objects and actions to the understanding of 
general notions or concepts. The study and analysis 
of this process casts us forthwith into the midst of 
psychology, and calls for a knowledge of that succes- 
sion and network of mental activities discussed in all 
the psychologies; sensation, discrimination, perception," 
analysis and synthesis, comparison, judgment, general- 
ization or concept, reasoning. An inquiry into these 
mental activities, which are among the most important 
in psychology, is necessary as a basis of induction and of 
general method. 

But even the more profound study of psychology does 
not necessarily give insight into correct methods of 
teaching. Many great psychologists have had little or 
no interest in teaching. Even eminent specialists in 
electricity and chemistry have not often been those to 
draw the immediate practical benefit from their studies. 
The application of psychology to the work of instruction 
constitutes a distinct field of inquiry and experiment. 
The output of the best experimental thinking in this 
direction may be called pedagogy. The process of induc- 
tion or concept-building leads the mind, as above indi- 
cated, through a series of different acts. We may first 
observe how far the mind is naturally inclined to follow 



INDUCTION. 133 

this process, and whether it is ii mark of healthy mental 
action in children and in adults. Later we may examine 
more closely the successive stages in the process itself. 

To get at the natural process it is well to observe first 
the action of a child's mind. , By analyzing a simple case 
of a farmer's child we may trace the mental steps in 
forming a general notion. So long as it has seen no 
barn except that on its father's farm, the word ham 
means to it only that particular object. But when it 
discovers that one of the neighbors has a similar build- 
ing called a barn, it learns to put these different objects 
under one head, and the general notion haryi as a build- 
ing for horses, cattle and feed gradually rises in the 
mind. Long before the child is six years old (school 
age) it may have seen enough of such barns for the gen- 
eral notion to be distinctly formed. By observing differ- 
ent objects, by comparing and grouping similar things 
together, it has formed a general notion in a regular pro- 
cess of induction and that without any help from teach- 
ers. 

At two and three years of age or as soon as a child 
begins to recognize and name new objects (because of 
their resemblance to things previously seen) this ten. 
dency to concept-building is manifest. Another illustra- 
tion: The child has seen the family horse several times 
till the word horse becomes associated with that animal. 
While out walking it sees another horse and pointing its 
finger says "horse." The memory of the first horse and 
the similarity calls forth the natural conclusion that this 
is a horse, though it may not be able to formulate the 
sentence. More horses are seen and compared till the 
word becomes the name of a whole class of animals. By 
a gradual process of observation, comparison and judg- 



124 GENERAL METHOD. 

ment the word horse comes to stand for a large group of 
objects in nature. 

A child's mind is naturally very active in detecting 
resemblances and in grouping similar objects together. 
It notices that there are certain people called women, 
others called men, that certain animals are called sheep, 
others cattle. One class of objects receives the name 
book, another stove, etc. The work of observing, com- 
paring and classifying is a perpetual operation in the 
child's active moods. In this way, what may appear at 
first as an interminable confusion or blur of objects in 
nature begins to fall into groups and classes. It is the 
child's own way of bringing order out of the apparent 
chaos of his surroundings. All this process of classifica- 
tion is natural and nearly unconscious, and results in a 
better understanding and interpretation of the things 
around him. 

Observe next the work of an educated adult, and how 
he increases and arranges his knowledge. If he is an 
incipient dry-goods merchant he learns by sight and 
touch to detect the quality of goods. He compares and 
classifies his experiences and becomes in time an expert 
in judging textile fabrics. On the other hand he becomes 
acquainted by personal contact with various customers 
and learns how to classify and judge them both as buy- 
ers and as debtors. 

If a botanist finds a new plant he examines its stem, 
leaves, root, flower, seed and environment. While enter- 
ing into these details he is also comparing it with fa- 
miliar classes of plants. Finally he is not satisfied till 
he can definitely locate it in his previous system. With 
every new plant that he discovers he travels over the 
whole road from the individual particulars to the general 



INDUCTION. 125 

classes of his whole system. The merchant and the sci- 
entist follow out with painstaking care and industry the 
same course which was involuntarily taken by the child, 
namely, observation of particulars, comparing and group- 
ing into classes. The same habit of mind may be ob- 
served in all people who are growing knowledge wards and 
who possess any thoughtful instincts. 

In acquiring knowledge along the line of induction, we 
are on the road to the solution of the puzzle that nature 
puts to every child. To every infant indeed the world is 
an enormous riddle or puzzle whose parts lie in fragments 
about him waiting the operation of his curious and in- 
ventive mind toward the reconstruction of the whole. 
Endless variety and complexity confronts us all in the 
beginning. There is indeed an order and classification of 
things in nature but it does not appear on the surface 
and for centuries men remained ignorant of the underly- 
ing harmony. Nature is full of valuable secrets, but they 
lie concealed from the careless eye. They are to be de- 
tected by prying deeper into individual facts, by putting 
a thing here and a thing there together, by ponder- 
ing on the relationship of things to each other in their 
nature, appearance and cause. It is a remarkable fact 
that we not only increase knowledge best by analyz- 
ing, comparing and classifying objects, experiences and 
phenomena — even into old age — but that the deeper we 
penetrate into the individual qualities and inner nature of 
objects, the more we extend and classify our information, 
the simpler all the operations of nature become to our 
understanding. The surprising simplicity and unity of 
nature in her varied phenomena is one of the mature pro- 
ducts of scientific study. The most scientific thinker 
then is only trying to reduce to a simple explanation the 



136 GENERAL METHOD. 

same puzzle which confronted the infant in its cradle. 
The problem in the same and the method similar. 

It is plain that the process of classifying objects and 
phenomena in nature and society is the beginning of 
scientific knowledge. A child begins to learn as soon as 
it notices the resemblances in things and arranges them 
into groups. The important thing for the teacher to de- 
termine is whether this inductive or concept-building ten- 
dency furnishes any solid ground upon which to base the 
work of instruction. Admitting that it is a natural 
process, common to both old and young in acquiring 
knowledge, perhaps it can be neglected because it will 
take care of itself. If it is self-active, needing no arti- 
ficial stimulus, let it alone. On the contrary, if in a 
healthy pursuit of knowledge, it brings the varied mental 
powers into a natural sequence where they will strengthen 
and support one another, it should be studied and used by 
teachers. It would be very commonplace to say that 
each of the faculties or activities involved in the induc- 
tive process should be disciplined and strengthened by 
school studies. There is but little difference of opinion 
on this subject though some would lay more stress upon 
sense training, some on memory, some on reasoning. 
The ground for this general conviction is the notorious 
fact that with children every one of these acts is per- 
formed in a faulty and superficial manner. The observa- 
tions of children are very careless and unreliable. Even 
adults are extremely negligent and inaccurate in their 
observations of natural objects, persons, and phenomena. 
But the mental powers brought to bear in observation 
are simple and elementary. The exercise of higher men- 
tal powers such as analysis, comparison, judgment, and 
reasoning is prone to be still more accidental and erro- 



INDUCTION. 127 

neous. Acknowledging then the necessity for training all 
these powers how can it best be done? Not by delegat- 
ing to each study the cultivation of one kind or set of 
mental activities but by observing that the same general 
process underlies the acquisition of knowledge in each 
subject and that all the kinds of mental life are brought 
into action in nearly every study. In short the inductive 
process is a natural highway of human thought in every 
line of study bringing all the mental forces into an 
orderly, successive, healthful activity. We may yet dis- 
cover that the inductive process not only gives the key 
to an interesting method of mastering different branches 
of knowledge, but in developing mental activity it brings 
the various mental powers into a strong natural sequence. 

One of the great ends of intellectual culture is to 
transform this careless, unconscious inductive tendency 
in children into the painstaking and exact scrutiny of the 
student and later of the specialist. 

Although the inductive process is a common highway 
of thought in all stages of intellectual growth from child- 
hood to maturity, certain parts of the road are much 
more frequently traveled in childhood and still others 
in youth and maturity. It is the work of pedagogy to 
adapt its materials to these changing phases of soul life 
in children. In the analysis of the inductive and deduc- 
tive processes we desire to come at the solution of this 
problem. 

Considered as a whole, there is a simple phase of the 
inductive process which is best explained by the terms 
absorption and reflection. It appears in the study of 
simple as well as of complex objects and indicates clearly 
the fundamental rhythm of the mind in acquiring and 
elaborating its knowledge. This action of the mind is a 



128 GENERAL METHOD. 

shuttle-like movement, a constant running back and 
forth between two extremes, absorption and reflection. 
We will test this statement upon examples. When we 
are in the mood for learning let some new object, a saw- 
mill, attract the attention. A quick general glance at 
the place and its surroundings tells us what it is. Now 
trace the operation of the mill as it draws up the logs 
singly from the rafts lying on the margin of the river 
and converts them into lumber. You observe first how 
the logs are carried up an inclined slide by means of an 
endless chain with hooks, into the mill. You examine 
this first piece of machinery and notice its mode of 
action. As the logs enter the upper story of the mill, 
they are thrown by heavy levers to either side and roll 
down towards the saws. Here is another piece of ma- 
chinery in its proper place. Having been stripped of the 
loose pieces of bark, the logs are grasped by another set 
of iron hands, lifted firmly to the carriage and passed to 
the circular or band-saw which takes off the side slabs 
and squares them for the gang-saw. The squared logs 
are then carried along over rollers and collected before 
the gang-saws. From two to four of them are clasped 
firmly together and then forced up against the teeth of 
the parallel group of saws, issuing from them as a batch 
of lumber. The boards are then passed on to a set of 
men at small circular saws by whom they are sorted and 
the edges trimmed, while still others with trucks carry 
them to the yard for stacking. 

Take note of the operation of the mind as it passes 
from one part of the machinery to another. Each part 
is first examined by itself to get its construction and 
method. Then its relation to what precedes and what 
follows is noted. Finally in review you survey the whole 



INDUCTION. 129 

process in its successive stages and understand each part 
and its relation to the whole and to the purpose of the 
mill. We might call this an analysis and synthesis of 
the process of making lumber, or in other words absorp- 
tion and reflection in an elementary form. In the obser- 
vation of such a complex piece of machinery as a large 
mill the mind swings back and forth many times between 
absorption in the study of parts and reflection upon their 
relation to each other. 

Having examined the mill in detail and grasped its 
parts as a connected whole, the next step is to observe 
its relation to the river, to the rafts and rafting-boats, 
and further back to the pineries and logging-camps up 
the river. (Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.) The 
occupations and sights along the Upper Mississippi and 
its head-waters, the pineries, and even the spring floods 
are intimately connected causally with the saw mills and 
lumber yards lower down. 

Or going in the opposite direction from the saw mill, 
we follow the lumber till it is used in the various forms 
of construction. Some of it enters the planing-mills and 
is converted into moldings, finishing lumber, sashes, 
blinds, etc. In all forms it is loaded upon the cars, and 
shipped westward to be used in the construction of houses 
and bridges. 

Before we get through with the line of thought en- 
gendered by observing the saw mill, we have canvassed 
the whole lumber industry from the pineries to the plans 
of architects and builders in the actual work of construc- 
tion. Not only has there been this progress of the mind 
from one object or machine to another of a smes con- 
nected by cause and effect, but there has been also a con- 
stant tendency to pass from the individual machines of 



130 GENERAL METHOD. 

which the series is composed to the classes of which these 
objects are typical. A circular-saw or a gang-saw is 
each typical of a class of saws. The same is true of 
each part of the machinery as well as of the saw mill or 
planing mill considered as a whole. Each of these objects 
whether simple or complex suggests others similar which 
we have observed or seen represented in pictures. Each 
part of the machinery in turn becomes the center of a 
set of comparisons leading from the concrete object in 
question to the general notion of the class to which it 
belongs. 

^-In all these cases we become absorbed in one thing for 
a while only to recover ourselves and to reflect upon the 
thing in its wider relations, either tracing out connexions 
of cause and effect as in a series of machines or passing 
from the single example to the class of which it is typical. 
Absorption and reflection! The mind swings back and 
forth like a pendulum between these two operations. 
Herbart who closely defined this process, called it the 
mental act of breatJmig, because of the constancy of its 
movement. As regularly as the air is drawn into the 
lungs and again expelled, so regularly does the mind lose 
itself in its absorption with objects only to recover itself 
and reflect upon them. 

In the inspection of a large printing press in one of 
our newspaper publishing houses we meet with a similar 
experience. The attention becomes centered upon the 
press for a close analysis and synthesis of its parts. The 
cogs, wheels, rollers, inking-plate, the chases for the type, 
the application of the power, the springs and levers, each 
part receives a close inspection, and the secret of its con- 
nection with other parts is sought for. There is a vigor- 
ous effort not only to understand each part but also the 



INDUCTION. 131 

connexion of the whole. The shuttle-like movement of 
the mind back and forth between the parts, absorbed for 
a moment, reflecting for a moment, continues until the 
complex mechanism is understood. When this process 
has been satisfactorily completed we are ready to turn 
our minds again to the other objects and rooms of the 
printing establishment. The work of the compositors, 
setting up different kinds of type, the proof-reading, the 
editorial work, the reporters all come in for a share of 
attention. The reporters lead us to the great world out- 
side whose happenings are brought here for publication. 
On the other hand, following the distribution of papers 
as they issue from the press, we think of news-boys, 
news-stands, mail-service, railroads and post-offices. But 
the inspection of a printing press also leads the thoughts 
in other directions and suggests other presses, great and 
small, in other times and places, other printing establish- 
ments, until the whole business of printing and publish- 
ing books and papers springs into the thought. 

If we desire to understand clearly the business of pub- 
lishing a newspaper, we must enter into an observation 
of the parts of the process from the collection of its news 
to its distribution by the mails and carriers. Besides 
noting these parts we must observe their causal connex- 
ion with each other and the role that each plays in the 
economy of the whole. The causal series thus clearly 
outlined produces insight into an occupation while every 
typical machine or appliance is one of a cross series in- 
tercepting the original series. The acquisition and assim- 
ilation of knowledge in different subjects will be found 
to exhibit the mental states of absorption and reflexion as 
just illustrated. Observe the manner in which we study 
a poem. It is first read and interpreted sentence by sen- 



133 GENERAL METHOD. 

tence, glancing from verse to verse to get the connec- 
tions. When the whole piece has been read and under- 
stood in its parts and connections, the suggested lines of 
thought are taken up and followed out in their wider ap- 
plications. Take for an example the "Burial of Moses" 
and in the proper analysis and study of the poem such a 
process of absorption and reflexion is observable. In 
pursuing the biography of John Quincy Adams or of Alex- 
ander Hamilton the facts of personal experience and 
action first absorb the attention from step to step in the 
study of his life. But reflexion on the bearings of these 
personal events upon contemporaries and upon public 
affairs is noticed all along. The same mental process is 
observed in studying a battle in history, a sentence in 
grammar, a squirrel in natural history, or a picture in art. 
The effect of such mental absorption and reflexion is 
to build up concepts. Series of causally related parts 
are also formed but each series in the end becomes a more 
complete complex concept, that is, a representative of 
many similiar series. The inspection of one printing es- 
tablishment suggests others which are brought into com- 
parison till the general notion publishing house is more 
clearly conceived. The same is true in the lumber trade. 
The concept lumber business is not confined to Minneap- 
olis or Chicago but is common to the great lake region, 
Maine, Washington, Norway and other countries. Con- 
cepts become more varied and complex with the advance 
of studies and there is scarely anything we learn by ob- 
servation or reflexion that does not ultimately illustrate 
and build up our concepts. The observation of even the 
miscellaneous objects in a large city leads to a variety of 
concepts and in the end by comparison to the general 
notion city. 



INDUCTION. 133 

How strong the concept-creating tendency of all ex- 
perience and thought is, can be seen in the words of lan- 
guage. The processes of thought become petrified in 
language. All progress in knowledge and acquisition of 
new ideas is reflected in language by an increase of 
words. But an examination of words in common use 
will show that they are nearly all the names of concepts. 
Proper names are the principal exception. Every com- 
mon noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is 
the name of a concept. To understand these concepts 
there must be somewhere a progress from the individual 
to the abstract, an induction from particulars to a general 
concept. Abstract or general notions cannot be acquired 
at first hand without specific illustrations. Even where 
the deductive process is supposedly employed a closer 
examination will uncover the concrete or individual illus- 
trations in the background and until these are reached 
the concept has no clear meaning. The concrete ex- 
amples whether introduced sooner or later by way of 
explanation are the real basis of the understanding of 
the concept. It is customary to invert the inductive 
process and to drive it stern forwards through grammar, 
geography, and other studies. Take for example the 
word hoomerang as it comes up in a geography or read- 
ing lesson. Webster's dictionary, which is recommended 
to children as a first resort in such difficulties, calls it 
"A remarkable missile weapon used by the natives of 
Australia." This gives a faint notion by using the 
familiar word ioeapo7i. The picture accompanying the 
word in the dictionary gives a more accurate idea because 
nearer the concrete. The best possible explanation would 
be a real boomerang thrown by a native South-Sea 
islander. In the absence of these a picture and a vivid 
—9 



134 GENERAL METHOD. 

V 

description are the best means at our disposal. The 

common mistake is in learning and reciting the definition 

while neglecting the concrete basis. By way of further 

illustration, try to explain to children who have never 

heard of them before the egg-plant, palm-tree, cactus, etc. 

It would be of interest to inquire into the process of 
concept-building in each of the school studies, where it 
appears under quite varying forms. The natural sciences 
are perhaps the best examples of concept-building from 
concrete materials, advancing regularly through a series 
of concepts from the individuals and species to the most 
general classes of plants, animals, etc. In chemistry 
and physics the laws and general principles are based on 
experiments and processes observable by the senses. 
Grammar and language, when studied as a science, ad- 
vance from concept to concept through etymology and 
syntax. In geography and history the concepts are less 
definite and more difficult to formulate, and yet there are 
certain great typical ideas which are to be developed and 
illustrated in each of these studies, as, for example, the 
law of cause and effect and the human virtues in history, 
and the forms of relief, the kinds of climate and their 
causes, the occupations of men and their relation to each 
other, in geography. The fundamental truths and rela- 
tions of arithmetic must be developed from objects. 
Reading, spelling, and writing are arts not sciences, and 
are more concerned with skill in execution than with the 
acquisition of a body of scientific truths. And yet cer- 
tain general truths are emphasized and applied in these 
studies. 

Having thus examined into the general nature of the 
inductive process and the extent of its application to 
school studies and to other forms of acquiring knowledge, 



INDUCTION. 135 

we are led to a closer practical discussion of each of the 
two chief stages of induction, first observation or intui- 
tion^ that is, the direct perception through the senses or 
through consciousness of the realities of the external 
world and of the mind. Second, association of ideas with 
a view to generalizing and forming concepts. Intuition 
means object-lessons in a broad sense. Object lessons in 
this liberal sense point to the direct exercise of the senses 
and intuitions in the acquisition of experience of all sorts. 
They include the objects, persons and events that we see 
around us and our own experiences in ordinary life, the 
grass, plants, trees and soils, the animals, wild and 
tame, with their structure, habits and uses; the rocks, 
woods, hills, streams, seasons, clouds, heat and cold. 
There is also the observation of devices and inven- 
tions ; tools, machinery and their workings, the dif- 
ferent raw and manufactured products with their ways 
of growth and transformation. Besides these are the 
various kinds and dispositions of men, different classes 
and races of people, with great variety of character, 
occupation and education. Their actions, modes of dress 
and customs are of much interest. But we have many 
other primary and indispensable lessons to learn from the 
playground, the street, from home and church, from city 
and country, from travel and sight seeing, from holidays 
and work days, from sickness and healthful excursions. 
Even a child's own tempers, faults and successes are of 
the greatest value to himself and to the teacher in a 
proper self-understanding and mastery. By object les- 
sons, therefore, we mean all that a child becomes conscious 
of through the direct action of his senses and of his mind 
upon external nature or inner experience. It is desired 
that a child's knowledge in all direct experience be sim- 



136 GENERAL METHOD. 

pie, clear and according to the facts. All words that he 
uses become only signs of the realities of his experience. 
Every word stands for a potent thought in his own life 
history. Of course object lessons in this rich and real 
sense can not be confined to such few objects — birds, 
leaves, models, and straws — as can be brought into a 
school room. All the world, especially the outside world, 

becomes 

"A complex Chinese toy 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy." 

Many of the most interesting objects and phenomena 
in nature and of man's construction can not be observed 
in the school room at all. For instance, the river, the 
bridge, the forest, the flight of birds, the sunrise, the 
storm, the stars, etc. Still they must know these very 
things and know how to use them better in construct- 
ing the mind's treasures than they are wont to do. In 
reading, grammar, geography, arithmetic and nature 
study we desire to ground school discussions daily upon 
the clear facts of experience, of personal observation. 
We need to clear up all confused and faulty perceptions 
and stimulate children to make their future observations 
more reliable. 

We have already seen the importance of object lessons 
in this full and real sense to interest. Interest in every 
study is awakened and constantly reinforced by an appeal, 
not to books, but to life. Much of the dull work in 
arithmetic, geography, and other studies is due to the 
neglect of these real, illustrative materials. 

Of the six great sources of interest (Her bar t) three, 
the empirical, the esthetic, and the sympathetic, deal 
entirely with concrete objects or with individuals, while 
even the speculative and social interests are often based 



INDUCTION. 137 

directly upon particular persons or phenomena. In ad- 
dition to this it may be said that the interests of children 
are overwhelmingly with the concrete and imaginative 
phases of every subject and only secondarily with general 
truths and laws. The latter are of greater concern to 
older children and adults. Object lessons therefore con- 
tain a life-giving element that should enter into every 
subject of study. 

Nor should these interesting illustrative object les- 
sons be limited to the lower grades. They contain the 
combustible material upon which an abiding interest in 
any subject is to be kindled. There are indeed other 
and perhaps higher sources of interest but they are 
largely dependent upon these original springs that flow 
from the concrete beginnings. 

In the second place, object lessons supply a stock of 
jjrimary ideas which form the foundation of all later pro- 
gress in knowledge. This is not a question of interest 
merely, but of understanding ^ of capacity to get at the 
meaning of an idea. Concepts are not the raw materials 
with which the mind works, but they are elaborated out 
of the raw products furnished by the senses and other 
forms of intuition. As cloth is manufa<^tured out of the 
raw cotton and wool produced on the farm or in southern 
fields, so concepts are a manufactured article, into whose 
texture materials previously gathered enter. Concepts 
do not grow up directly from the soil of the mind any 
more than ready-made clothing grows on bushes or on the 
backs of the wearers. Concepts must be made out of 
stuff that is already in the mind, as woolen blankets are 
spun and woven out of fleeces. Our present contention 
is that the mind shall be filled up with the best quality of 
raw stufi", otherwise there will be defect and deficiency 



138 GENERAL METHOD. 

in its later products. The stuff out of which concepts are 
built is drawn from the varied experiences of life. On 
account of this intimate relation between the realities of 
life and school studies they cannot be separated. Every 
branch, especially in elementary studies, must be treated 
concretely and be built up out of sense materials. Every 
study has its concrete side, its illustrative materials, its 
colors of individual things taken from life. Every study 
has likewise its more general scientific truths and classi- 
fications. The prime mistake in nearly all teaching and 
in the text-book method is in supposing that the great 
truths are accessible in some other way than through the 
concrete materials that lie properly at the entrance. The 
text-books are full of the abstractions and general form- 
ulae of the sciences, but they can, in the very nature of 
the case, deal only in a meagre way with the individual 
objects and facts upon which knowledge in different sub- 
jects is based. This necessary defect in a text book 
method must be made good by excursions, by personal 
observation, by a constant reference of lessons to daily 
experience outside of school, by more direct study of our 
surroundings, by the teacher perfecting himself in this 
kind of knowledge and in its skillful use. 

The discussion of the concept and of the inductive pro- 
cess has shown that concepts cannot be found at first hand. 
There must be observation of different objects, compar- 
ison and grouping into a class. A person who has never 
seen an elephant nor a picture of one can form no ade- 
quate notion of elephants in general. We can by no shift 
dispense with the illustrations. The more the memory is 
filled with vivid pictures of real things, the more easy and 
rapid will be the progress to general truths. Not only 
are general notions of classes of objects in nature or of 



INDUCTION. 139 

personal actions built up out of particulars but the general 
laws and principles of nature and of human society must 
be observed in real life to be understood. We should 
have no faith in electricity if it were simply a scientific 
theory, if it had not demonstrated its power through ma 
terial objects. The idea of cohesion would never have 
been dreamed of, if it had not become necessary to explain 
certain physical facts. The spherical form of the earth 
was not accepted by many even learned men until sailors 
with ships had gone around it. Political ideas of popular 
government which a few centuries ago were regarded as 
purely Utopian are now accepted as facts because they 
have become matters of common observation. The circu- 
Icition of tlie blood remained a secret for many centuries 
because of the difficulties of bringing it home to the 
knowledge of the senses. These examples will show how 
difficult it is to go beyond the reach of sense experience. 
Even those philosophers who have tried to construct 
theories without the safe foundation of facts have labored 
for naught. The more our thought is checked and guided 
by nature's realities the less danger of inflation with pre- 
tended knowledge. Bacon found that in this tendency 
to theorize loosely upon a slender basis of facts was the 
fundamental weakness of ancient philosophy. Nature if 
observed will reiterate her truths till they become con- 
vincing verities, while the study of words and books alone 
produces a quasi-knowledge which often mistakes the 
symbol for the thing. 

Having this thought in mind, Comenius, more than two 
and a half centuries ago, said, "It is certain that there is 
nothing in the understanding which has not been previ- 
ously in the senses, and consequently to exercise the 
senses carefully in discriminatinor the differences of nat- 



140 GENERAL METHOD. 

ural objects is to lay the foundation of all wisdom, all 
eloquence, and of all good and prudent action. The 
right instruction of youth does not consist in cramming 
them with a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and 
opinions collected from authors. In this way the youth 
are taught, like ^sop's crow in the fable, to adorn them- 
selves with strange feathers. Why should we not, instead of 
dead books, open the living book of nature? Not the 
shadows of things, but the things themselves, which make 
an impression upon the senses and imagination, are to be 
brought before the youth." 

There has always been a strong tendency in the schools 
to teach words, definitions and rules without a sufficient 
knowledge of the objects and experiences of life that put 
meaning into these abstractions. The result is that all 
the prominent educational reformers have pointedly con- 
demned the practice of learning words, names, etc. , with- 
out a knowledge of the things signified. The difference 
is like that between learning the names of a list of per- 
sons at a reception, and being present to enter into 
acquaintance and conversation with the guests. The oft- 
quoted dictum of Kant is a laconic summary of this 
argument. "General notions (concepts) without sense- 
percepts are empty." The general definition of com- 
posite flowers means little or nothing to a child, but after 
a familiar acquaintance with the sunflower, dandelion, 
thistle, etc., such a general statement has a clear mean- 
ing. Concepts without the content derived from objects 
are like a frame without a picture, or a cistern without 
water. The table is spread and the dishes placed but no 
refreshments are supplied. 

Having completed the discussion of intuition^ including 
object lessons, that is, the preparatory step to the in- 



INDUCTION. 141 

ductive process, we reach the second, reflection and 8%it- 
vey. We are seeking for a general term that covers the 
several steps, in the latter part of the inductive process. 
It includes comparison, classification and abstraction. It 
may be discussed from the standpoint of "association of 
ideas," and contributes directly to concentration. 

We have in mind chiefly that thoughtful habit which 
is not satisfied with simply acquiring a new fact or set of 
ideas, but is impelled to trace them out along their vari- 
ous connexions. We have to do now not with the acqui- 
sition but with the elaboration and assimilation of knowl- 
edge. The acquisition of knowledge in the ordinary sense 
is one thing, its elaboration in a full sense sets up a stan- 
dard of progress which will put life into all school work 
and reach far beyond it, and in fact is limited only by the 
individual capacity for thought. 

In school, in reading and study we have been largely 
engaged in acquiring knowledge on the principle that 
''knowledge is power." But no practical man needs to 
be told that much so-called school knowledge is not power. 
Facts which have been simply stored in the memory are 
often of little ready use. Like wheat in the bin, which must 
first pass through the mill and change its entire form be- 
fore it will perform its function. Facts, in order to 
become the personal property of the owner, must be 
worked over, sifted, sorted, classified aad connected. 
The process of elaborating and assimilgiting knowledge is 
so important that it requires more time and pains than 
the first labor of acquisition. Philosophers will admit 
this at once, but it is hard for us to break loose from the 
traditions of the schoolmasters. The mind is not in all 
respects like a lumber-yard. It is, to be sure, a place 
for storing up knowledge, just as the yard is a deposit for 



142 GENERAL METHOD. 

lumber. But there the analogy ceases and the mind be- 
gins to resemble more the contractor and builder. There 
is planing, sawing and hammering, the materials collected 
are prepared, fitted and mortised together, and a build- 
ing fit for use begins to rise. Knowledge also is for use 
and not primarily for storage. That simple acquisition 
and quantity of knowledge are not enough is illustrated 
by the analogy of an army. Numbers do not make an 
army but a rabble. A general first enlists raw recruits, 
drills and trains them through a long period and finally 
combines them into an effective army. Many of our ideas 
when first received are like disorderly raw recruits. They 
need to be disciplined into proper action and to ready 
obedience. 

In connexion with assimilation the analogy between 
the stomach and the mind is of still greater interest. 
The food received into the stomach is taken up by the 
organs of digestion, assimilated and converted into blood. 
The process however takes its course without our con- 
scious effort or co-operation. Knowledge likewise enters 
the mind, but how far will assimilation go on without 
conscious effort? If kept in a healthy state the organs 
of digestion are self active. Not so the mind. Ideas 
entering the mind are not so easily assimilated as the 
food materials that enter the stomach. A cow chews her 
cud once but the ideas that enter our minds may be 
drawn from their receptacle in the memory and worked 
over again and again. Ideas have to be put side by side, 
separated, grouped, and arranged into connected series. 
There is, no doubt, some tendency in the mind toward in- 
voluntary assimilation, but it greatly needs culture and 
training. Many people never reach the thinking stage, 
never learn to survey and reflect. The tendency of the 



INDUCTION. 143 

mind to work over and digest knowledge should receive 
ample culture in the schools. There is a mental inertia 
produced by pure memory exercise that is unfavorable to 
reflection. It requires an extra exertion to arrange and 
organize facts even after they are acquired. But when 
the habit of reflection has been inaugurated it adds much 
interest and value to all mental acquisitions. 

There are also well-established principles which guide 
the mind in elaborating its facts. The laws of the asso- 
ciation of ideas indicate clearly the natural trends of 
mental elaboration. The association of things because 
of contiguity in time and place is the simplest mode. 
The classification of objects or activities on the basis of 
resemblance is the second form and that upon which the 
inductive process is principally founded. In the third 
case objects and series are easily retained in memory 
when the relation of cause and effect is perceived be- 
tween them. These natural highways of association, 
especially the second and third, should be frequently 
traveled in linking the facts of school study with each 
other. Indeed the outcome of a rational survey of an 
object or fact in its different relations is an association of 
ideas which is one of the best results of study. Such 
connexions of resemblance and difference or of cause and 
effect are abundant and interesting in the natural sci- 
ences and physical geography, also in history and lan- 
guage. 

The final stage of induction is the formulation of the 
general truths, the concepts, principles and laws which 
constitute the science of any branch of knowledge. These 
truths should be well formulated in clear and expressive 
language and mastered in this form. Moreover the re- 
sults reached, when reduced to the strict scientific form 



144 GENERAL METHOD. 

are the same in the inductive methods as in the deductive 
or common text-book method. Not that the effect on 
the mind of the learner is the same but the body of truth 
is unaltered. The general truths of every subject can be 
easily found well arranged in text-books. But we are 
more anxious to know how the youth may best approach 
and appreciate these truths than simply to see them 
stored in the mind in a well-classified form. 

A rich man in leaving a fortune to his son would more 
than double the value of the inheritance if he could teach 
him properly to appreciate wealth and form in him the 
disposition and ability to use it wisely. 

The method of reaching scientific knowledge, through 
the inductive process, that is, by the collection and com- 
parison of data with a view to positive knowledge, will 
give greater meaning to the results. Interest is awak- 
ened and self-activity exercised at every step in the pro- 
gress toward general truths. By the reflective habit 
these truths will be seen in their origin and causal con- 
nexion, and the line of similarity, contrast, causal rela- 
tion, analogy and coincidence will be thoughtfully traced. 

Possibly the progress toward formulated knowledge 
will be less rapid by induction, but it will be real pi'o- 
gress with no backward steps. It may well be doubted 
whether, with average minds, real scientific knowledge is 
attainable except b}'^ a strong admixture of inductive pro- 
cesses. 



THE WILL. 145 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE WILL. 



We have now completed the discussion of the concept 
bearing or inductive process in learning, and appercep- 
tion, and find that they both tend to the unifying of 
knowledge, and to the awakening of interest. 

It remains to be seen how the will may be brought 
into activity and placed in command of the resources of 
the mind. 

The icill is that power of the mind which chooses, de- 
cides and controls action. 

According to psychology there are three distinct 
activities of the mind, hnowing^ feeling^ and willing. 
These three powers are related to one another, and yet 
the will should become the monarch of the mind. It is 
expected that all the other activities of the mind will be 
brought into subjection to the will. For strong character 
resides in the will. Strength of character depends en- 
tirely upon the mastery which the will has acquired over 
the life, and the formation of character, as shown in a 
strong moral will, is the highest aim of education. 

The great prohlem for us to solve is: 1. How far can 
teaching stimulate and develop such a will? 

There is an apparant contradiction in saying that the 
will is the monarch of the mind, the power which must 
control and subject all the other powers, and yet that it 
can be trained, educated, moulded, and chiefly too by a 
proper cultivation of the other powers, feeling and know- 



146 GENERAL METHOD. 

ivig. Knowledge and feeling, while they are subject to 
the will, still constitute its strength, just as the soldiers 
and officers of an army are subject to a commander and 
yet make him powerful. 

We shall first notice the dependence of the will upon 
the knowing faculty. It is an old saying "that knowl- 
edge is power." But it is power only as a strong will is 
able to convert knowledge into action. Before the will 
can decide to do any given act it must see its way clearly. 
It must at least believe in the possibility. I71 trying to 
get across a stream^ for example, if one can not swim and 
there is no bridge nor boat nor means of making one, the 
will can not act. It is helpless. The will must be shown 
the way to its aims or they are impossible. The more 
clear and distinct our knowledge, the better we can lay 
our plans and vnll to carry them out. It would be im- 
possible for one of us to will to run a steam engine from 
Chicago to St. Paul to-day. We don't know how, and 
we should not be permitted to try. In every field of 
action we must have knowledge, and clear knowledge 
before the will can act to good advantage. It is only 
knowledge, or at least faith in the possibility of accom- 
plishing an undertaking, that opens the way to will. 
Much successful experience in any line of work brings 
increasing confidence and the will is greatly strength- 
ened, because one knows that certain actions are possible. 
The simple acquisition of facts therefore, the increase of 
knowledge, so long as it is well digested, makes it pos- 
sible for the will to act with greater energy in various 
directions. The more clear this knowledge is, the more 
thoroughly it is cemented together in its parts and sub- 
ject to control, the greater and more effective can be the 
will action. All the knowledge we may acquire can be 



THE WILL. 147 

used by the will in planning and carrying out its pur- 
poses. Knowledge therefore, derived from all sources, is 
a means used by the will, and increases the possibilities 
of its action. 

But, secondly, there are found still more immediate 
means of stimulating and strengthening the will, namely, 
in the feelings. The feelings are more closely related to 
will than knowledge, at least in the sense of cause and 
effect. There is a gradual transition from the feelings 
up to will, as follows: Interest in an object, inclination, 
desire and purpose or will to secure it. We might say 
that will is only the final link in the chain and the feel- 
ings and desires lead up to and produce the act of willing. 
Even will itself has been called a feeling by some psychol- 
ogists and classed with the feelings. But the thing in 
which we are now most concerned is how to reach and 
strengthen the will through the feelings. Some of the 
feelings which powerfully influence the will are desire of 
approbation, ambition, love of knowledge, appreciation 
of the beautiful and the good ; or on the other side, ri- 
valry, envy, hate and ill-will. Now it is clear that a 
cultivation of the feelings and emotions is possible which 
may strongly influence the purposes and decisions of the 
will, either in the right or wrong direction. It is just at 
this point that education is capable of a vigorous influ- 
ence in moulding the character of a child. The cultiva- 
tion of the six interests already mentioned is little else 
than a cultivation of the great classes of feeling, for in- 
terest always contains a strong element of feeling. It 
is certain in any case that a child's, and eventually a 
man's will, is to be guided largely by his feelings. 
Whether any care is taken in education or not, feeling, 
good or bad, will guide the will. Most people, as we 



148 GENERAL METHOD. 

know, are too much influenced by their feelings. This is 
apparent in the adage, "Think twice before you speak." 
Feelings of malice and ill-will, of revenge and envy, of 
dislike and jealousy, get the control in many lives, be- 
cause they have been permitted to grow and nothing 
better has been put in their place. The teacher by select- 
ing the proper materials of study is able to cultivate and 
strengthen such feelings as sympathy and kindliness to- 
ward others, appreciation of brave unselfish acts in others, 
the feeling of generosity, charity and a forgiving spirit, 
a love for honesty and uprightness, a desire and ambition 
for knowledge in many directions. On the other hand 
the teacher may gently instill a dislike for cowardice, 
meanness, selfishness, laziness and envy, and bring the 
child to master and control these evil dispositions. Not 
only is it possible to cultivate these feelings which we 
may summarize as the love of the virtues and develop a 
dislike and turning away from vices, but this work of 
cultivating the feelings may be carried on so systematic- 
ally that great habits of feeling are formed, and these 
habits become the very strongholds of character. They 
are the forces acting upon the will and guiding its choice. 
It is freedom of the loill to chose the best, that we 
are after. We desire to limit the choice of the will if 
possible to good things. We desire to make the character 
so strong and so noble and consistent in its desires that it 
will not be strongly tempted by evil. The will in the end, 
while it controls all the life and action, is itself under the 
guidance of those habits of thought and feeling that have 
been gradually formed. Sully says, "Thus it is feeling 
that ultimately supplies the stimulus or force to volition 
and intellect which guides or illumines it." 



THE WILL. 149 

A study of the will in its relation to knowledge and 
feeling reveals that the training and development of the 
will depend upon exercise and upon instruction. There are 
two ways of exercising will power, first, by requiring it 
to obey authority promptly and control the body and the 
mind at the direction of another. The discipline of a 
school may exert a strong influence upon pupils in teach- 
ing them concentration and will power under the direc- 
tion of another. Especially is this true in lower grades. 
Children in the first grade have but little power or habit 
of concentrating the attention. The will of the teacher 
combined with her tact must aid in developing the ener- 
gies of the will in these little ones. The primary value 
of quick obedience in school, of exact discipline in 
marching, rising, etc. , is twofold. It secures the neces- 
sary orderliness and it trains the will. Even in higher 
and normal schools such a perfect discipline has a great 
value in training to alertness and quickness of apprehen- 
sion associated with action. 

Secondly, by the training of the mind to freedom of 
action, to self activity^ to independence. As soon as 
children begin to develop the power of independent 
action their self activity should be encouraged. Even 
in the lowest grades the beginnings may be made. An 
aim may be set before them which they are to reach by 
their own efforts. For example, let a class in the first 
reader be asked to make a list of all the words in the last 
two lessons containing th^ or o^, or some other combi- 
nation. Activity rather than repose is the nature of 
children, and even in the kindergarten this activity is 
directed to the attainment of definite ends. With 
number work in the first grade the objects should be 
handled by the children, the letters made, rude drawings 



150 GENERAL METHOD. 

sketched, so as to give play to their active powers as 
well as to lead them on to confidence in doing, to an 
increase of self activity. As children grow older, the 
problems set before them, the aims held out, should be 
more difficult. Of course they should be of interest to the 
child so that it will have an impulse and desire of its own 
to reach them. There is nothing so valuable as setting 
up definite aims before children and then supplying them 
with incentives to reach them through their own efforts. 
It has been often supposed that the only way to do this 
is to use reference hooks, to study up the lesson or some 
topics of it outside of the regular order. But self activ- 
ity is by no means limited to such outside work. A 
child's self activity may be often aroused by the manner 
of studying a simple lesson from a text book. When a 
reading or geography lesson is so studied that the pupil 
thoroughly sifts the piece, hunts down the thought till 
he is certain of its meaning, when all the previous knowl- 
edge the pupil can command is brought to bear upon 
this, to throw light upon it, when the dictionary and any 
other books familiar to the child are studied for the sake 
of reference and explanation, self activity is developed. 
Whenever the disposition can be stimulated to look at a 
fact or statement from 7nore than one standpoint^ to criti- 
cise it even, to see how true it is, or if there are excep- 
tions, self activity is cultivated. 

The pursuit of definite aiins always calls out the will 
and their satisfactory attainment strengthens one's con- 
fidence in his ability to succeed. Every step should be 
toward a clearly seen aim. At least this is our ideal in 
working with children. They should not be led on blindly 
from one point to another, but try to reach definite results. 



THE WILL. 151 

There is a gradual transition in the course of a child's 
schooling from training of the will under guidance to its 
independent exercise. Throughout the school course 
there must be much obedience and will effort under the 
guidance of one in authority. But there should be a 
gradual increase of self-activity and self-determination. 
When the pupil leaves school he should be prepared to 
launch out and pursue his own aims with success. 

Will effort, however, to be valuable must have its roots 
in those moral convictions which it is the chief aim of the 
school to foster and strengthen. We have attempted to 
show in the preceding chapters how the central subject 
matter of the school could be chosen and the other studies 
concentrated about it with a view to accomplishing this 
result. In concluding our discussion of general princi- 
ples of education, and in summing up the results, basing 
our reasoning upon psychology, we are always forced to 
the conclusion that education aims at the loill, and more 
particularly at the will as influenced and guided by moral 
ideas. This is the same as saying that we have completed 
the circle and come round to our starting point, that 
moral character is the chief aim of edifcatio?i. 

Teachers who are interested in this phase of pedagogy 
will do well to study the scie7ice of ethics^ not that it will 
much aid them directly in school work. It will at least 
give them a more comprehensive and definite notion of 
the field of morals and perhaps indicate more clearly 
where the fnaterials of moral education are to be sought 
and the leading ideas to be emphasized. 

Herbart projected a system of ethics, based on psy- 
chology, with the intention of classifying the chief moral 
notions and of showing their relation to each other. He 
also developed a theory of the origin of moral ideas and 



153 GENERAL METHOD. 

their best means of cultivation, and then based his system 
of pedagogy upon it. 

The chief classes of ethical ideas of Herbart are briefly 
explained as follows: 

1. Goodwill. It is manifested in the sympathy we 
feel for the sorrow or joy of another person. It is illus- 
trated by the example of Sidney and Howard already 
cited. 

2. Legal right. It serves to avoid strife bj some 
agreement or established rule; e. g., the government of 
the United States fixes the law for pre-empting land and 
for homestead claims so that no two persons can lay claim 
to the same piece of land. 

3. Justice, as expressed by reward or punishment. 
When a person purposely does an injury to another all 
men unite in the judgment, ' 'He must be punished. " Like- 
wise if a kind act is done to anyone we insist upon a re- 
turn of gratitude at least. 

4. Perfectio7i of will. This implies that the will is 
strong enough to resist all opposition. David's will to 
go out and met Goliath was perfect. A boy desires to 
get his lesson but indolence and the love of play are too 
strong for his will. 

There is nothing which goes so far to make up the 
character of the hero as strength of will which yields to 
no difficulties. 

5. Inner freedom. This is the obedience of the will 
to its highest moral incentive. Ability to set the will 
free from all selfish or wrong desires and yield implicit 
obedience to moral ideas. This of course depends upon 
the cultivation of the other ideas and their proper subor- 
dination, one to another. 



THE WILL. 153 

The five moral ideas just given indicate the lines 
along which strength of moral character is shov^^n. They 
are of some interest to the teacher as a systematic ar- 
rangement of morals, but they are of no direct value in 
teaching. They are the most abstract and general 
classes of moral ideas and are of no interest whatever to 
children. 

In morals the only thing that interests children is 
moral action. Whether it be in actual life or in a story or 
history the child is aroused by a deed of kindness or 
courage. But all talk of kindness or goodness in general, 
disconnected from particular persons and actions is dry 
and uninteresting. This gives us the hey to the child's 
mind in morals. Not moralizing, not preaching, not 
lecturing, not reproof, can ever be the original source of 
moral ideas with the young, but the actions of people 
they see and of those about whom they read or hear. 
Moral judgments and feelings spring up originally only 
in connexion with human action in the concrete. If we 
propose then to adax>t moral teaching to youthful minds, 
we must make use of concrete materials, observations of 
people taken from what the children have seen, stories 
and biographies of historical characters. A story of a 
man's life is concrete because it brings out his particular 
motives and actions. This is the field in which instruc- 
tion has its conquests to make over youthful minds. 

We will gather up the fruits of our discussion in the 
preceding chapters. Having fixed the chief aim in the 
effort to influence and strengthen moral character, we 
find concentration to be the central principle in which all 
others unite. It is the focusing of life and school expe- 
riences in the unity of the personality. The worth and 
choice of studies is determined by this. Interest unites 



154 GENERAL METHOD. 

knowledge, feeling and will. The culture epochs supply 
the nucleus of materials for moral educative purposes. 
Apperception assimilates new ideas by bringing each 
into the bond of its kindred and friends, spiuning threads 
of connexion in every direction. The inductive process 
collects, classifies and organizes knowledge, everywhere 
tending toward unity. 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 155 



CHAPTER VIII, 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 

Our closing chapter will be an attempt to show the 
application of the principles thus far discussed to the 
daily work of teaching, more particularly to the child's 
work of study and recitation and the teacher's supervis- 
ion of the processes of learning and thinking.^ 

Lesson Unities. — It is evident that in this kind of 
teaching no single recitation can be viewed apart from 
the series of lessons to which it belongs. The subject- 
matter of any study should be first selected so as to be 
adapted to the age, spirit, and previous knowledge of 
children, and then it should be arranged into a succes- 
sion of topics or unities each of which may be treated first 
separately, and then in its relation to the others. One 
of these methodical unities may be completed in a single 
recitation or it may spread over a series of lessons. 

Steps in Teaohing a Lesson. — On the basis of the psy- 
chological principles already treated, the process of teach- 
ing a new topic leads through a series of steps. The 
Herbartain school of pedagogy in Germany has devel- 
oped a plan of recitation work based upon these steps, 
and has applied them successfully to the teaching of com- 
mon-school studies. The two main stages on the road to 
acquisition of knowledge have been already indicated: 



♦Note. — The following pages were first published in a pamphlet, "How to 
Conduct the Recitation," by the author. Published by E. L. Kellogg & Co., New 
York. 



156 GENERAL METHOD. 

1. As observation and scrutiny of individual things; 2. 
As the association and comparison of objects or ideas 
with a view to arrangement into classes or for the pur- 
pose of generalizing and formulating results. 

First Stage: Presentation. — The first stage may be 
broken into two smaller half-day journeys. Before set- 
ting out on a journey it is well to survey the road and 
glance at a guide-book. Before beginning a new subject 
it is well to recall familiar ideas bearing upon it, to 
refresh our minds. This is a preparatory study, a mak- 
ing ready for the lesson. The second part is the actual 
presentation of the new facts, the familiarizing the mind 
with the new subject. 

The subject-matter is now at hand, and the first stage 
of teaching the lesson is complete. But this newly ac- 
quired information has not yet settled to its proper place 
in the mind; it is not properly associated with previous 
knowledge. 

Second Stage: Elaboration. — This elaboration of newly 
presented ideas and facts leads us through a series of 
three additional steps, which thus complete the process 
of acquisition: 1. The new object is compared with 
similar things already in the mind. In this way it finds 
its fitting companionship. 2. Every new object pre- 
sented to the mind and then compared with others gives 
rise to new conclusions. The clear statement of this 
general result or truth focuses the main idea of the les- 
son. 3. This general truth may now be exemplified in 
new cases and applied to new circumstances. 

Briefly stated the steps are as follows: 1. Prepara- 
tion; 2. Presentation; 3. Association and comparison; 
4. Generalization; 5. Practical application. 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 157 

It is to be remembered that a subject to be treated in 
this manner must contain a unity of thought; that it 
must centre in an object which is typical of a class, so as 
to serve as a basis of comparison and generalization. 

Analogy of the Farmer. — These steps may be fairly 
illustrated in their general outlines by an analogy taken 
from the work of a farmer. 1. The soil is ploughed, 
harrowed, and made ready for the seed. 2. The grain is 
sowed upon the ready soil and raked in. 3. The growing 
grain is -cultivated and the weeds destroyed. 4. The 
harvest is brought in. 5. The grain is used for practical 
purposes of food. 

The analogy is so complete that it scarcely calls for a 
commentary. The preparation is the preparing of the 
soil of the mind for the seed-corn of instruction. The 
presentation is sowing the seed upon this prepared soil 
of the mind. The third stage is the cultivation of the 
growing crop, the working over of the knowledge just 
acquired by means of comparison. The fourth step is 
the harvest time, the drawing out of the general truth or 
law involved in the lesson. Finally, the particular uses 
to which the harvest grain is put, the application of 
acquired knowledge to the practical uses of life. 

No Royal Road iii Teaching. — The five steps just out- 
lined are based, as we believe, on general principles 
which make them applicable to almost every subject of 
study. But the manner of applying them to different 
studies varies greatly. The ability to apply them suc- 
cessfully to geography would not qualify for equal suc- 
cess in arithmetic or botany. The teacher must first be 
a proficient in the study which he would desire to teach 
in this way. Both the concrete facts and the general 
truths of the subject should be familiar and logically 



158 GENERAL METHOD. 

arranged in his mind. To put it in a mild form, the 
teacher must have a thorough knowledge of his subject, 
and must have this knowledge well digested for teaching 
purposes; For teaching purposes! That is, that we have 
a knowledge of those psychological principles which we 
first outlined as a basis of the five steps, viz., observa- 
tion of concrete things, apperception, comparison and 
association, generalization and the awakening of interest, 
self-activity, and will power by these means. Now it is 
evident that no plan based on these principles will fur- 
nish a royal road to success in teaching. Success along 
this line depends upon industry, adaptability, and con- 
tinuous practice. It will be an up-hill road for some time, 
and it is only gradually that one will acquire that mas- 
tery of the subject and that tact in the manipulation of 
a somewhat complex machinery that come only through 
toil and pains. 

Dull Machine Work. — It does not require a prophet 
to see that the five steps in careless hands will degene- 
rate into a mechanical routine. It might be even worse 
than text-book lore, for a good text-book is always better 
than a poor teacher. It is not intended that this plan 
and these principles shall make a slave of the teacher, 
but that by a hard-earned mastery of their details, and 
by a successful application of them to the concrete ma- 
terials of study, he gradually works his way out into 
the clear daylight of conscious power. In this way the 
teacher becomes a skilled architect, with clear ideas of 
the strength and resistance of materials. 

Examples op the Formal Steps. 

Three simple illustrations of this succession of steps 
in the treatment of a subject will now be given. 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 159 

(1) Statement of the Aim. 
We will examine and study the oak trees found in our 
forests. 

1. (Preparation.) Let the class recall what they have 
seen of oak trees in the woods, size of trees, acorns. Do 
they remember the shape and size of the leaves? What 
is the appearance of the wood and what is it used for? 

(The purpose of the teacher here is not to present any 
new facts to the class, but simply to find out what they 
remember from previous observation and to excite in- 
terest. ) 

2. (Presentation of facts.) The best plan is to visit 
the woods or an oak grove, notice carefully the trunk and 
bark, branches and leaves, acorns (food of squirrels.) 
On returning to school, have an accurate description of 
the oak tree from the class, according to definite points 
(e. g., trunk and bark, branches, leaves, and acorns.) 
Then follows a discussion of oak wood for chairs, desks, 
doors and windows, bridges, walks, etc. (The teacher 
adds such facts as the children cannot furnish.) 

3. (Comparison. ) Name the different kinds of oak — • 
white oak, red oak, burr oak. Notice the differences in 
leaves and acorns, size of trees, wood and uses. 

4. (Classification, generalization.) Definition of the 
oak family. The oak is a native hard-wood tree. It has 
acorns, and simple leaves of nearly uniform shape. The 
wood is tough and strong, of varying colors, but always 
useful for furniture, building or other purposes. (After 
the previous observation and discussion, the pupils will 
be able to give a definition similar to this, assisted by a 
few questions from the teacher.) 

5. (Application.) Children should be trained to rec- 
ognize the different kinds of oak trees about home, and 



160 GENERAL METHOD. 

to distinguish them from other hard-wood trees. They 
may also notice the oak panels and furniture, and be able 
to tell oak finishing in public and private houses. 

Note — If there is time enough for a separate study of two or more varieties 
of oak, and the trees are close by so as to be seen, it is well to treat each variety 
according to the first and second steps, and in the third compare as above, 

(2) The Cotton-gin. 
(Aim.) We will find out how a machine was invented 
to remove the seed from cotton. 

1. (Preparation.) Question the class on the cotton- 
plant, raising and picking cotton, and the uses of cotton. 

2. (Presentation). Tell or read the story of Whitney 
and the invention of the cotton-gin. Notice the effect of 
this invention on the production of cotton in the South, 
and upon the growth of the South. 

3. (Comparison). Name other important inventions 
and their effects — sewing-machine, printing-press, steam- 
engine, reaper, steam-boat, telegraph, etc. Which of these 
had the most important results? 

4. (Generalization or abstraction. ) Call upon the chil- 
dren to state the general purpose of all these inventions, 
j:o save labor, to make a better use of the forces of nature. 

5. (Application.) Do any hardships result to any. 
body in consequence of these useful inventions ? {e. g. , 
men thrown out of employment by use of machinery.) 

iS) Nouns. 

Suppose that a class has had oral and written lan- 
guage work, but no technical grammar. 

(Aim.) In talking and writing you have been accus- 
tomed to use words. We propose to talk now about a 
class of words called 7iouns. 

1. (Preparation.) Have you heard the word noims 
before ? Give some words that you think are nouns. Try 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 161 

to point out the nouns in this sentence. "The ship sailed 
over the ocean." 

(It may be that these questions cannot be answered 
by the children for lack of knowledge. But even if they 
show no knowledge of the subject, these qestions may in- 
cite curiosity and awaken interest, and they require very 
little time.) 

2. (Presentation.) I will give you some words that 
are called nouns. Stove, cherry, hat, court-house, carpet, 
picture, whale, shoe, barn, mountain. Have you seen all 
these things ? 

3. (Comparison.) Notice these things and see if you 
can tell what they all refer to. We will take two or 
three words that are not nouns and see what they refer 
to. Up^ and^ quickly. What is the difference between 
these words and the nouns ? Look at the nouns again 
and tell what they refer to. 

4. (Definition.) Looking at our list of nouns again 
you may tell what a noun is. So far as these words are 
concerned every noun is the name of what ? (The con- 
clusion that the children may reach by a little question- 
ing is that all these nouns are the names of objects.) The 
treatment of proper nouns and abstract nouns may be 
according to a similar method in the following lessons, 
and then the complete definition of a noun can be ob- 
tained ? 

5. (Application.) Each child may make a list of nouns 
that we have not had. 

Let easy sentences be given in which they may point 
out the nouns. 

Criticisms. 

Anticipating Results. — One objection raised to the 
clear statement of the aim of a lesson at the start is 



162 GENERAL METHOD. 

that in such a statement we tell the children what we 
wish them to find out for themselves, that we anticipate 
results which they should learn to discover and state. 
This criticism is just if true. But it is a misconception 
of the proposed manner of stating the aim. It is a fun- 
damental principle that the statement of the aim should 
not anticipate results. It should be definite and clear, 
but it should state a problem for solution. It should 
point in the direction of the result without giving the 
clue. If the teacher proposes to develop and illustrate 
the law of multiple proportions in physics, he would not 
state the law as the aim, but put it in such form as this: 
We have noticed that certain chemical elements unite to 
form compounds; we will next investigate the question 
as to whether they unite according to any definite law. 
Experimint and investigation will reveal what the law is. 
PupiVs Work. — Another serious criticism of this plan 
of class-work is that it outlines well the work of the 
teacher^ but what does the pupil have to do? 
We will attempt to illustrate as follows: 
(Preparation.) The pupil has to prepare his lesson 
before coming to the class. This is done in all good 
schools. Suppose that the subject treated is the early 
discovery and exploration of the Ohio Valley previous to 
the French and Indian War. The teacher proposes this 
as the next topic for history study. If this subject is 
treated according to the recitation plan, the first thing 
is to determine how much or how little the children know 
of the proposed subject. Who were the first explorers 
of the Ohio Valley? Whence they came? Who owned 
the land? The topics naturally brought out by this brief 
questioning are. The French, the English, the Indians. 
Having determined thus what the children know, and 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 163 

having excited their curiosity, the next work for the 
teacher (at this stage) is to indicate what pages of the 
text-book and, if desirable, what pages in other histories 
bear directly upon this topic. If the references are more 
than one person will have time to look up, certain per- 
sons or sections of the class may be asked to be prepared 
on special points or books of reference. The work of 
preparing the lesson by studying up these references is 
similar to that of lessons as usually assigned. 

(Presentation.) Now the pupil is required not only 
to present the topic which he has studied, but to pay close 
heed to the additional facts and topics presented by other 
pupils, and to see if he can arrange the facts presented 
by the whole class into systematic form. The proof of 
this ability is the oral statement of the main points. It 
is plain that the pupil must have his wits about him, pay 
close attention to all that is said, and then exercise his 
own powers of arrangement and expression. 

With the completion of this part of the work we 
should be done with the first two steps, namely, the 
preparation and presentation of the facts. 

The third step consists of a comparison of the facts 
of this lesson with similar facts or topics in other lessons 
previously learned. The self- activity of pupils is fully 
awakened by asking them to reproduce similar cases in 
American history where the English and French, the 
English and Dutch, the English and Spanish have both 
explored and laid claim to new territory, causing con- 
flicting claims; e. </. , the claim of the English and 
French to Nova Scotia; the claim of English and Dutch 
to New York; the claim of English and Spanish to 
Georgia and Carolina; etc. ' 



164 GENERAL METHOD. 

The clear statement of each of these cases and their 
comparison will bring out a common conclusion from the 
children regarding them all (fourth step). What did all 
these claims rest upon, and how were they enforced ? 
The pupil's own intelligence and moral judgment are 
abundantly sufficient to answer these questions. The 
conclusion thus reached will probably point to the man- 
ner in which the claim to the Ohio Valley was setted (fifth 
step). 

After a topic has been thus fully treated before and 
during the recitation, it will often prove an excellent ex- 
ercise to call for a written composition giving a full dis- 
cussion of this topic. The pupil is left free to treat the 
main topics in his own way. The outline of the subject 
has been already fully developed in the class, but the pu- 
pil is free to discuss the points in his own language and 
to form his own conclusions. 

Translation From Prof. W. Rein's "Das Erste 
schuljahr. " 

The Formal Steps in their Outlines. — Proceeding now 
to the act of instruction itself, we notice first of all that 
the subject-matter of every study like Arithmetic or Ge- 
ography is to be divided up into a large number of smaller 
parts, units of instruction, each of which will occupy 
from one to four, or even more, recitations. These di- 
visions of a term's work in History or Geography are 
what Ziller calls methodical unities^ and each one of them 
is to be carried through the successive steps of a system- 
atic recitation plan, namely, the formal steps. 

For if the single topics which go to make up the great 
variety of school studies are to be clearly understood and 
thoroughly assimilated, each must be worked over by 
itself. For this purpose sufficient time must be given so 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 165 

that the details of each object can be absorbed, and this 
absorption with the details must be succeeded by a period 
of recollection, a brief survey of the situation, a glance 
backwards and forwards, so as to fix the relations of this 
object to others. Suppose that the instruction in a class 
begins with one of these methodical unities. The first 
thing to do is to make plain to the pupils the great object 
or aim of the lesson. In a primary class, for instance, 
the aim may be so expressed: "To-day we will hear the 
story of a little girl that lost both father and mother." 
For a more advanced class as follows: "We are acquainted 
with the earth as a great ball hanging in space. We 
will next see whether this ball is at rest or in motion." 

Reasons for Stating the Aim at First. — There are sev- 
eral important reasons in favor of the plain statement of 
the purpose of a recitation at the beginning. 1. It pushes 
aside and out of view those irrelevant thoughts which 
chance to occupy the mind before the recitation, and it 
accordingly makes room for those ideas which are about 
to be developed. 2. It transplants the children into the 
new circle of ideas which are to demand their attention, 
and it encourages the rise in the child's mind of those 
older and kindred thoughts which will be most welcome 
supports to the new ideas about to be presented. 3. It 
excites expectation, and this is the most favorable dispo- 
sition of mind for the beginning of instruction. 4. It gives 
the child a strong incentive to an exercise of the will, 
and impels it to voluntary co-operation in solving the 
difficulties of the proposed lesson. 

The last point is of fundamental importance, and 
worthy of a special consideration. The pupil should 
know beforehand what is coming if he is to bring all his 
powers to bear on the work of learning, and it is easier 

—11 



166 GENERAL METHOD. 

to call out all his effort if he knows beforehand what 
is to be gained. To conduct a child along an unknown 
road toward an unknown object, by means of questions 
and hints, the object of which he does not see, to lead 
him on imperceptibly to an unknown goal, has the dis- 
advantage that it develops neither a spontaneous mental 
activity nor a clear insight into the subject. 

Having reached the end of such a line of thought, the 
pupil looks about himself bewildered. He cannot survey 
the road that he has just gone over. He does not com- 
prehend what has happened to him. He stands at the 
goal, but does not see the relation in which the result 
stands to the labor performed. He does not rise to that 
satisfactory mental activity and favorable disposition of 
mind which are stimulated by the pursuit of a clearly set 
purpose. No aim, no will! Now since an instruction 
that aims at moral character finds its highest purpose in 
the development of will power, it follows that a lesson 
should develop the will just as much as the understand, 
ing. But to develop will-power, instruction must pursue 
plainly set aims, and to reach them the pupil must be 
called upon to throw all his mental powers into the effort. 

The general purpose of a lesson having been made 
plain, the real work of teaching then begins, and in every 
methodical unity this work runs through a succession of 
five steps. 

First Step. — The first step in this process consists in 
a preparation of the ground for the reception of the new 
lesson. This is done by freshening up and calling clearly 
to the mind such older ideas as bear upon the new, such 
as by their similarity explain and assist the understanding 
of the new. It is only when a troop of old familiar ideas 
come forth to meet the strangers that they are received 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 167 

easily into the mind. It is in this way alone that they 
can make a lasting impression upon the thoughts and 
feelings. If these forces which lie asleep in the back- 
ground of one's thoughts are not called into activity, one 
will remain dull and indifferent to the recitation, and the 
instruction reminds us of a learned discourse which shoots 
over the heads of the listeners. Instead of interested at- 
tention and participation, it produces only weariness of 
mind. 

This result will always follow when that which is said 
awakens no chords of sympathy in the minds of the 
hearers. If nothing springs forth from within to greet 
that coming from without, the lesson will be meaningless 
and the pupil unreceptive. Things new and strange can 
only be appropriated. by means of a wealth of old ideas, 
and the plan of recitation must see to the preparation of 
these old materials during the first step. 

Second Step. — The second step begins with the pre- 
sentation of the new lesson, which will vary in manner 
according to the age of pupils and the nature of the study. 
A story would be related to a primary class, or developed 
according to the conversational method. A reading les- 
son for older pupils would be read. A geography topic 
would be presented by the teacher while talking and 
drawing, and a subject in physics while experimenting 
and speaking. If the preparation has been of the right 
kind the lesson will be appropriated with ease and cer- 
tainty, and the teacher will not be compelled to talk and 
ask and explain all around the subject. Whenever this 
is necessary the preparation, the first step, must be re- 
garded as a failure. What has been learned is not only 
to be momentarily understood, but permanently appro- 
priated. It is necessary to close up this step with repe- 



168 GENERAL METHOD. 

tition and drill, and these must be continued under 
varying forms till the lesson has been firmly fixed. In 
this manner the first great act in the process of teaching 
and learning has been completed, namely, the presenta- 
tion and reception of the subject-matter, and it consists, 
as we have seen, of two steps, preparation of the ground 
and presentation of the lesson. The second act within 
the limits of a methodical unity is the process of building 
up and bringing into distinct form the general or abstract 
ideas which are to be drawn from the concrete materials 
already collected, and this second act is brought to a con- 
elusion in the three following steps. 

Third Step. — In the third step we are to bring to- 
gether in the mind the newly won ideas, to compare them 
among themselves and with older ideas, and when neces- 
sary with additional new ones still to be presented ; in 
short, to compare and to combine the new and the old. 
Such a comparison and union of ideas is necessary for two 
reasons : (1) in order that connection and harmony be 
established in one's range of ideas, and (2) that what is 
general and essential in the midst of special individual 
things may be extracted from them. Nowhere should 
heterogeneous heaps of knowledge, like piles of gravel, be 
brought together. Always and everywhere there should 
be an effort towards well associated and systematized 
knowledge. " Our whole personality rests in the end 
upon the unity of consciousness, and this is disturbed and 
injured when the mind is driven through a confused con- 
glomerate of knowledge in which unconnected ideas are 
piled up togther. " 

But every concrete individual thing which is treated 
as a methodical unity contains or embodies a general 
truth, an abstract notion, which may be separated from 



THE FORMAL vSTEPS. 169 

the concrete thing in which it is embodied. But it can 
only be brought to light by bringing this object into com- 
parison with other well-known concrete objects which 
contain the same essential idea or truth, by bringing to- 
gether in the mind things similar but not identical. 
That which is common and essential to all is strengthened 
by repetition, while accidental features and differences 
drop easily into the background. The common truth 
which all the objects embody springs forth as a new idea 
of higher potency, as a general notion, as a rule or law. 

Fourth Step. — But the abstract idea is still bound up 
with the concrete thing ; a complete separation of this 
abstract or general notion from its clothing in particulars 
has not yet taken place : and this is the purpose of the 
fourth step. By means of a few well-directed questions 
we call out into pure and simple relief the general truth 
or rule, freed from its particular applications. We 
reduce this idea to definite language expression, and 
finally bring it into systematic connection with our pre- 
viously acquired knowledge. It only remains to impress 
the abstract ideas thus acquired upon the mind by repe- 
tition, so as to convert them into a real mental possession. 
With this the process of abstraction is complete, but 
teaching cannot afford to end the matter here. A fifth 
step is needed to convert the knowledge acquired into use. 

Fifth Stej). — Knowledge and ability to know have of 
themselves no value either for the individual or for soci- 
ety. Knowledge must first step into the service of life. 
One must know how to apply his knowledge. Knowledge 
and power must be changed into use; they must be trans- 
formed into conscious ability. But will not this take 
care of itself? Not at all. Hundreds of children have 
learned how to estimate the surface of a triangle, and 



170 GENERAL METHOD. 

many of them can give the proof of the rule with ease 
and precision. But put the question to one of them: How 
many acres does a triangular garden with sides of a given 
length contain? He will stand helpless, unconscious of 
the fact that he possesses in his own mind the necessary 
elements for the solution of the problem. How is this 
explained? He has not learned to employ his knowledge. 
It is a dead possession. And are there not plenty of such 
cases? The conclusion is that even the application, the 
use of knowledge, has to be learned. ''Here also it is only 
practice that makes the master. But drill which aims 
only at mechanical habit is not sufficient. Even during 
school life that which is learned should be applied as 
often and in as many cases as the narrow limits of the 
child's life permits. " 

Since the value of knowledge culminates in use, 
instruction should cultivate its use so far as possible in a 
closing step called application. For this purpose the 
child should be held to a diligent use of its stock of ideas 
as rapidly as they are acquired, to go from the particular 
to the general, and back again from the general to the 
particular, to traverse his circle of ideas from a given 
standpoint in all directions, and to make use of the 
results reached for the solution of moral, theoretical and 
practical questions. In this manner a child's acquired 
ideas may be so developed, so welded together in firm, 
systematic, comprehensive association, that all his knowl- 
edge becomes a reliable, personal possession. It is clear 
and systematic as well as practical. 

And this ends the development of general notions 
within the limits of the formal steps of instruction. 

To recapitulate: In the work of instruction each 
methodical unity should be carried through the following 
steps: 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 171 

1. It should introduce the new lesson by means of a 
preparatory discussion. 

2. Present the new lesson. 

3. Compare the new in its parts and with older ideas 
and their combination. 

4. Draw out the general results of this comparison, 
and arrange them in systematic form. 

5. Convert the knowledge acquired into use. 

Translation From Wiget. 

The following pages are a translation from Wiget's 
"Die formalen Stufen des Unterrichts, " with occasional 
paragraphs from the author. They cover the same 
ground as the preceding discussion. 

It is necessary to distinguish clearly between a par- 
ticular and a general notion. (Between a percept and a 
concept.) For example, we desire to distingush between 
the particular notion of a tree and the general notion of 
a tree. There is here a difference to be noted in the usage 
of language. We say the particular notion of ci tree, as 
there are many, very many particular notions of trees. 
But we do not say the general notion (concept) of a tree, 
but the general notion tree^ as there is only one such 
general notion. The particular notion (percept) is the 
mental picture of a definite tree and one may possess as 
many particular notions as one has seen trees. The gen- 
eral notion bears the essential nature of all trees. While 
the particular notion always relates to a single object, 
the "extension" of the general notion is much greater; 
it includes the family or genus. 

Evidently, however, the particular notion of the lin- 
den in front of my house has a much richer content than 
the general notion tree. While in the definition of the 



172 GENERAL METHOD. 

latter I iDtroduce only those characteristics which are 
found in every tree; in describing the former, besides 
these, I notice a series of characteristics which are pe- 
culiar to this tree alone. While the general notion ex- 
ceeds the particular notion in extent^ in respect to content 
the opposite is true. 

Between the particular notion of a tree and the gen- 
eral notion tree, there is a series of intermediate steps. 
If I think the general notions, crab-apple, apple tree, fruit- 
tree, foliage-tree, tree, the extent increases from one 
general notion to another, while the number of char- 
acteristics decreases in the same proportion, until the 
general notion tree in its widest extent includes all trees, 
but in regard to content it shrivels up to the bare char- 
acteristics of root, stem, and top. 

In what relation now do the particular and general 
notion stand to the things of reality? The particular 
notion of the linden-tree in the yard is a mental picture 
of it (though not a photograph in the real sense of the 
word). A definite object in the outer world corresponds 
to this, if it is correct. If it is not a faithful picture, it 
must be corrected through the activity of the senses, till 
the object and the particular notion correspond. How 
is it with the general notion? Is there any such a thing 
in nature, which is simply tree^ not a foliage tree, not 
evergreen, not apple, nor pear tree, neither larger nor 
smaller, neither slender nor gnarled? In nature there 
are only individuals; nothing can represent the pure 
general notion; each thing contains besides the general 
charactistics specific marks. An important conclusion is 
drawn from this. A particular notion (percept) is a 
product of sense perception^ the general notion (concept), 
since it cannot spring directly from the senses, is a pro- 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 173 

duct of thinking. It is a thought process, which, in the 
throng of particular notions, separates the general from 
particular and combines the abstracted characteristics to 
a general notion. The more we extend a general notion 
and the more we strip it of content, by so much more do 
we rise from the concrete reality, which is mirrored in 
the particular, into the sphere of the abstract, whose 
expression is general notion (concept). 

The word observation (Anschauung), that is, the gain- 
ing of particular notions through the senses, has acquired 
in pedagogical language a wider significance which we 
must first determine. It means more than perception 
through sight, for we use it in reference also to percep- 
tion through the other senses. But it is not covered by 
the term sense perception. Our reading books speak also 
of narrative-observation-lessons. The sense perception in 
this case can only refer to the letters seen and the sounds 
heard. But these are not the perceptions that the nar- 
rative-observation-lessons seek to develop. They refer 
rather to the content of what has been heard or read. 
The pupil is to gQt particular notions of the hero of the 
narrative, of his deeds and character. In this sense Pes- 
talozzi speaks of observations of the feelings and mental 
states (intuitions), and even Comenius speaks of obser- 
vations with the mental eye. 

But these observations (particular notions) of a mental 
kind, refer just as sense perception to something co/icre^6. 
They are not something abstract like the general notion. 
There is a great difference between repeating the verse, 
"Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to 
dwell together in unity" and narrating some particular 
act of peace-making character, between saying, "neigh- 
borly kindness is admirable" and telling of the self-sacri- 



174 GENERAL METHOD. 

ficing death of William Tell or of Howard, between de- 
scribing in general terms the age of chub-law and of rob- 
ber-knights and painting the life of such an adventurer 
with his individ lal traits. 

Mental observation of particular deeds stands there- 
fore in the same contrast to abstract general notions 
(concepts) as sense perception does. 

Whether I examine a plant with the eye, receive a 
melody through the ear, examine a mineral through taste, 
smell and touch, or even through the mediation of the 
written or spoken word — if I represent to my mind the 
activity of a great man, the death of a hero, the value or 
worthlessness of an act or disposition; in all these cases, 
I have to do with something concrete, with a single pic- 
ture, a particular notion. 

It is a usage of speech to represent the progress from 
the narrower to the more general notions under the 
sense picture of rising or climbing upwards. It repre- 
sents the general notion as the superior and the corres- 
ponding narrower notion as the subordinate. 

We sometimes speak of the notions as built up into 
a structure, as a sort of pyramidal tower, whose broad 
foundation consists of the great variety of particular 
notions (percept?) the first story somewhat narrower, is 
formed of the lowest class notions as crab-tree, bell-flower, 
etc., over these rise the broader general classes, apple- 
tree, peach-tree, pine, birch, and above these the more 
general classes still, as stone-fruit, winged-fruit, etc., 
until the structure terminates in the highest general 
notion (concept) tree. 

Thus objects are classed under the general notion^ 
(concept) examples under the rule^ and phenomena under 
the law. General notion, rule, law — together they con- 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 175 

stitute a principle of comprehension and orderly arrange- 
ment. They give a birds-eye-view of the multitude of 
things known. They facilitate a correct estimate and 
grasp of single things. One knows "where to put a 
thing." 

In the process of learning at what point shall our 
study begin, with particular or with general notions? 
In guiding children on the road to knowledge, shall we 
ask them at first to fix their attention on particular 
objects and persons in action or shall we have them 
begin with definitions, rules and laws? 

Wiget says further, "The naive empirical method in 
pedagogy imagined the matter to be very simple. The 
general notions which a child is to acquaint himself with 
are presented to him, the system to be acquired is trans- 
mitted, cut and dried." 

The botanist began with the most general notion of 
his science, the conceipt plant, proceeded then to the next 
subordinate groups, phanerogams and cryptogams, and 
further to the definitions of the classes, subclasses, fam- 
ilies, and lastly to a description of the concrete plants. 
The geometer began with the definition of the most gen- 
eral notions, point, line, surface, solid and advanced to 
the real surfaces and solids. The music teacher started 
out with a drill upon the scale and followed with real 
songs, the teacher of literature described the character 
of a literary period in esthetical and philosophical review, 
without the students having read any of the literary pro- 
ducts. 

To-day this systematic procedure is generally regarded, 
theoretically at least, as belonging to the dead past. Its 
criticism therefore may be brief. 



176 GENERAL METHOD. 

What does a pupil think in connexion with a dictated 
general notion or one learned from a book ? ' 'A triangle is 
a surface bounded by three straight lines. " ' 'To the pulse 
family belong woody or herbaceous plants with simple, 
triple, or pinnate leaves, with mostly irregular flowers." 
"In accented syllables a single consonant following 
a single vowel, etc., is doubled." They are for him sim- 
ple words. " Particular notions without general notions 
are blind" says Kant, and he added, "general notions 
without particulars are empty." But let it be supposed, 
that the pupil is able to represent something to his mind 
from these definitions, how shall he become conscious of 
the fact that the rule or definition learned is really a com- 
prehensive idea^ a clasping together in one thought of the 
common characteristics of a class of individuals, unless he 
has first tested it in a series of triangles, plants of the 
pulse family, etc. ? It is therefore an illusion to suppose 
that a general notion, for which particular ideas are 
wanting, can be directly transferred to a pupil. People 
have long known this or at least felt it, and have sub- 
joined a few illustrations to the rule. After seeing the 
examples the child understood the rule. But if the child 
only understands the rule after the illustrations, why put 
the rule first ? Ratich long ago called this a round-about 
way. Rule — example— -rule. We can save ourselves the 
trouble of setting up the rule at the beginning of the in- 
vestigation. 

The example, the particular notion, must be the 
starting-point of knowledge. "Nothing is in the under- 
standing which was not first in the senses." (Comenius.) 
This is the course which the earliest men were compelled to 
enter upon in appropriating general notions. Text-books, 
outlines and tables did not grow on the trees, nothing 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 177 

was given but the concrete things and phenomena. Con- 
cept and rule were the work of the mind. 

In contrast to a logical and systematic procedure, 
which advances from the general to the particular, it is a 
psychological process. It can be seen that a full de- 
scription of this process must fall under the chief heads, 
the acquisition of particular notions and the derivation 
of general notions. 

How ARE Individual Notions G-ained ? 

By individual notion we understand a concrete single 
picture. Such a single picture is not a simple idea but 
under a close scrutiny it turns out to be something com,- 
plex. The individual notion of a piece of chalk consists 
of a series of elements, of the idea of bulk, of color, of 
hardness, of structure, of taste. The individual notion 
of a plant, of an animal, of a continent, consists of a 
multitude of elementary ideas. So it is also with indi- 
vidual historical notions, with the life-picture of Charle- 
mange, with the idea of the Burgundian wars, or of a 
single battle in them, with the mercy of the Good Sa- 
maritan, and so with the esthetic ideas of a song, a pic- 
ture or statue. The individual notion designates some- 
thing concrete, something particular, but it is always a 
complex thing. 

How do we attain to individual notions? We shall 
catch a hint by testing our newly acquired ideas as to 
their clearness and definiteness. While upon an excur- 
sion we observe a plant, and afterwards desire to describe 
it to a botanist to ascertain its name. "How many petals 
had the corolla? Were the stamens attached to the pet- 
als?" We are unable to answer, and yet we saw the 
parts named ; they stood before our eyes ; but these fea- 
tures are lacking in our mental picture. If a number of 



178 GENERAL METHOD. 

plants were laid before us, iDcluding the one mentioned, 
we should perhaps recognize it. ' 'It is this one, not that. " 
We are able to distinguish it from others, but not to fully 
characterize it from memory, "I entered the woods in a 
dreamy whim, in search of naught, such was my aim." 
The hasty sketch was due to lack of purpose; a purposed 
attention would have produced a better result. A better 
result? Certainly. But would it have been complete? 
We examine many a plant, machine, building, relief, care- 
fully and attentively, and we are still unable to give ex- 
act account to ourselves or to others of the thing seen. 
The perfect picture does not follow the first attempt. So 
is it also with other ideas. We have listened eagerly to 
a melody and then hum and whistle it, but one strain is 
forgotten and no thinking can supply the defect. We 
have read the history of the seven year's war and a mo- 
ment later are not able to reproduce the battles in exact 
order. In the life of Charlemagne we fail in an exact idea 
of the succession of the Saxon wars, and if only a name 
or a date is lacking the notion is not complete. 

The first impression is as a rule somewhat incomplete. 
But the outline may be completed. Each one does it 
more or less consciously in the same way. One takes up 
the plant, the book, or the picture the second time, he 
has the melody sung again or glances at the notes and 
directs the whole attention to the defective parts. If a 
single return to the object is not sufficient a second fol- 
lows till the result is satisfactory. After grasping the 
rough outline of the whole we drop into absorption with 
the details. The individual notion thus ripens. Some- 
times it takes place involuntarily by accidental repetition 
of the impression, sometimes through effort and perse- 
verance, frequently in a few hours, often after years. 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 179 

But the speed of movement makes no difference in the 
articulation of the process. Outline vie^o of the whole — 
absorption in details — recollection of the whole. These 
are the steps. 

How should individual notions be produced in chil- 
dren? Should we attempt to avoid the defective, i^ude 
outline of the whole? Or shall we imitate the natural 
course and through imitation assist and accelerate it? 
Comenius prefers the latter. He asks that the eye of the 
pupil first take in the whole object, then master the 
single parts and tarry long enough with each till it may 
be clearly grasped. (Magna didactica, Chap. 20.) And 
Pestalozzi is of the same opinion. Since this method of 
procedure is based upon a psychical process the term 
natural may be applied to it in a genuine sense of the 
word. Let us take a concrete case. In natural science 
lessons the potato is to be treated. The pupil already 
knows much of its use as food for man and beast, for 
instance, the time of planting and digging, and the 
appearance of the vegetable. But he has probably only 
a faulty notion of the plant; some essential marks of the 
flower and fruit are not yet familiar to him, at least not 
perfectly clear. What has the teacher to do if he wishes 
to enter upon the psychological process before indicated? 
He must begin with a rough outline view of the whole. 
He must first determine what the pupil knows. He must 
lead him to express himself concerning it. It is also 
advisable to bring into definite order whatever the pupil 
communicates, that touches on the nature of the subject. 
Now comes the second part of the work — the absorp- 
tion in the details. The bulbs were designated by the 
pupils as the fruit of the plant, the notions of the flower 
were indistinct. Specimens are distributed. "Now 



180 GENERAL METHOD. 

look at the flowers again." Thus the single parts are 
examined so far as they are important, and afterwards 
the whole outline is completed. G-rasp of the whole — 
absorption — review of the whole. 

In applying our principle to the above example will 
the omitted characteristics in the picture of the potato 
plant be grasped distinctly, if in accordance with a sys- 
tematic description, they are mingled interchangeably 
with what is well known — first something known, then 
something not before noticed, and again a familiar part 
being described — or is it better, after reviewing the fa- 
miliar points sufficiently, to drop them for a while into the 
background of thought and direct one's attention to the 
lacking part, fix this firmly and associate it with the 
whole ? 

The second plan is the better both for the sake of at- 
tention and of thoroughly impressing it. In fact we 
shall not seek to cover up nor to render indistinct the 
transition from old to new, but on the contrary make it 
very distinct. The supplementary facts and explanations 
are first fixed by themselves. ' ' Who can tell me again 
what we have just learned ? " Thus each point is brought 
into proper relation to the old. "Now we will repeat 
the whole again but not forget to add also what we have 
just learned." Thus the individual notion is developed. 

When a child is first summoned to give as full an ac- 
count as possible of an object from his own experience 
and when new information is afterwards brought in to 
supplement this, it is manifest that the self activity of 
the pupil and his interest are aroused. 

The imitation of the natural progress from the crude 
grasp of the whole to absorption in particulars recom- 
mends itself to us then for three reasons. 1. It insures 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 181 

both to the old and the new the right quality and vigor 
of attention. 2. It favors the self activity of the pupils. 
3. On the basis of apperception, it reviews and vivi- 
fies the old ideas so that they will be of more service 
in acquiring the new. "For related old ideas condition 
the reception of the new. From this law is derived first 
of all, a direction for the selection of the subject matter. 
It sJiould never be absolutely neio. It should always be so 
selected and arranged that it may find related facts in the 
child's knowledge." 

In reading lessons a useful preparation (first step) may 
sometimes consist in suggesting a similar line of thought 
to that in the lesson, before the pupils read the lesson 
itself. Southey's "Battle of Blenheim" may be pre- 
pared for by calling ap the scenes of a battlefield and by 
naming the relics that are found in such a place. By 
reproducing from memory what the children may have 
heard or read of such scenes, the appreciation of the 
selection will be more rapid and vivid. To insert the 
references and explanations from time to time during the 
first reading of the piece tends to interrupt the strength 
and unity of the impression. "The sphere of action 
belonging to preparation is thus widened. Not simply 
one but a whole complex of ideas is called to mind and 
brushed up in order to insure a reception of the new into 
a kindred family group." (Wiget. ) 

Frequently a double sort ol preparatio)i is serviceable. 
When studying the camel, it is fitting to call up not only 
what the pupils may know of the camel, its use and man- 
ner of life, but also the characteristics of similar animals 
more familiar to the children, as of the ox and sheep. 
Or if the battle of Yorktown is the new subject, not only 
review what may be known of it but of other similar con- 



182 GEN"ERAL METHOD. 

flicts during the Revolution, as Bunker Hill and the 
Evacuation of Boston, or Lincoln's surrender at Charles- 
town. 

There is, to be sure, perpetual danger of overshooting 
the mark by allowing too wide a range of recollection, 
danger of calling to mind many irrelevant things and of 
wasting time and losing sight of the main topic. But if 
the teacher has an objective point clearly in view, he can 
direct the discussion and hold it to its proper limits. 
Some methodical unities are so complex and extensive 
that we are called upon to alternate two or three times 
between preparation and presentation. A reading les- 
son should usually be divided into two distinct parts, 
each of which should pass through the steps of prepara- 
tion and presentation. First the study of the subject 
matter, the meaning of the piece; second, the work for 
attaining proficiency in reading. 

Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith" recalls familiar 
scenes to every child. After touching upon these the 
piece may be read with sufficient questioning to bring 
out clearly the meaning of each word, simile, and verse 
and the thought as a whole. Thus the first preparation 
and presentation are complete. Proficiency in clear and 
expressive reading is the next aim. 

The preparation may begin with a phonic drill upon 
some of the more difficult words as chestnut^ bellows^ choir ^ 
2^a7'adise. In advancing from verse to verse emphasis 
must be laid upon clearness and expression until the dif- 
ficulties of the piece are brought into a clear light. The 
final drill, which aims at perfection in the art of reading, 
is a step beyond presentation and belongs (if indeed at 
all in the formal steps) to application. 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 1S3 

From Particular to General Notions. 
The general notion is the higher form of knowledge 
into which the particular notions are to be transformed. 
In the nature of general notions lies a suggestion of their 
origin. He who has seen but one rose, one triangle, can 
have 710 general notion of rose or triangle. He who knows 
but one case of a plural ending in s, but one illustration 
of a feminine in a, can have no knowledge of the rule, or 
if he knows but one example of the power of attraction 
he is not conscious of the km. General notions, rules 
and laws can only be derived from a number of examples, 
from particular cases. Since they are the expression of 
what is general and universally accepted, it is a matter 
of primary importance, by comparing the multitude of re- 
lated facts and phenomena, to separate the general from 
the individual. This process of abstraction is not always 
executed under the direction of the will, but frequently, 
as in the correction and amplification of our particular 
notions, without purpose and by accident. We must 
therefore call in question the above mentioned statement, 
that general notions are a product of thinking, so far as 
thinktng is looked upon as a voluntary act. For even a 
child, before all instruction and without voluntary reflec- 
tion, 'appropriates a great variety of general notions, or 
what corresponds to these. When he sees the big dog or 
the little poodle, the slender grey-hound or the short- 
legged spaniel, he cries out ' 'See the dog. " He therefore 
proved that the class dog is familiar to him and that he 
knows how to fix each in its class. 

The psychical process which mechanically produced 
this general notion, may be plainly seen. With every 
new dog seen the characteristic idea of dogs repeated 
itself ; when he had seen ten the perception of the com- 



184 GENERAL METHOD. 

mon feature had repeated itself ten times while the pe- 
culiarity of each dog had appeared but once. In looking 
at an equilateral, an isosceles, and an irregular triangle, 
the idea of three-sidedness was repeated each time, while 
the facts of the equilateral, isosceles, or irregular form ap- 
peared but once each. It is therefore easy to see that 
the repeated perception of that which distinguishes a tri- 
angle or a dog impressed itself in a deeper and livelier 
manner than the particular features and that gradually 
one forms the habit of overlooking the particular features 
or of seeing them only hastily and imperfectly. 

This ascendency of the general over the particular 
manifests itself unmistakably in the fact that we desig- 
nate all the different varieties by the word do<f^ or in the 
other case by the word triangle. 

Before school days begin a child attains the general 
notions, man, wife, child, person, horse, bird, fish, worm, 
animal, rose, flower, leaf, root, tree, grass, plant, and 
many others. But when we begin to scrutinize the gen- 
eral notions that spring up in accordance with the nat- 
ural psychical mechanism of the mind, we discover, as in 
testing the accidentally acquired particular notions, that 
the psychical general notions are, as a rule — defective, 
crude ; if one is not so it is accidental, since the psychical 
concept is always a work of chance. 

Some of them do not contain all the general characteris- 
tics. 

A child is not able to define the general notion dog as 
zoology requires it. Besides the general form, he thinks 
perhaps only of the barking and fighting, and would not 
hesitate to call a wolf a doo; on meetincr it the first time. 
The fish is that which swims, the bird is that which flies, 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 185 

and accordingly he classifies the whale under the former 
and the bat, fluttering in the twilight, under the latter. 

Or the general notion is given characteristics that do 
not belong to it. 

With the general notion fruit we easily combine the 
idea of use as a food product. Then comes the false idea 
of the potato bulb. Grass is at first defined as that 
which grows in pastures as food for cattle. In both cases 
there attaches to the psychical general notion another 
defect. The general is too much blended with the indi- 
vidual. Instead of thinking of the characteristics, we 
think of the individuals to which they belong. This is 
natural, for in the above-mentioned process of forming 
general notions by accident, some characteristics, to be 
sure, have become more clear through repetition, but a 
conscious detachment from others less distinct has never 
taken place. 

Therefore the psychical general notions, if designed 
to furnish a reliable knowledge, must be revised and cor- 
rected. In testing each single characteristic we ask, 
<'Is it also peculiar to all the individuals to which the 
other common marks apply ? " and, " Are all the marks 
included which belong to the characteristic of the whole?" 
Content and extent of the general notion are examined 
and, according to the test, expressly altered or accepted. 
The general notion dog is clearly defined ; from the 
notion fruit the idea of use for food is excluded ; to the 
general notion fish the particular kind of breathing and 
reproduction is added ; the notion grass is extended to 
include the botanical grasses. 

During the process we come to the detachment, the 
abstraction of the general notion. In raising the ques- 
tion, what characteristics belong to the dog, to the tri- 
—12 



186 GENERAL METHOD. 

angle, to the notion fish or plant, the class features are 
isolated. The systematic effort to combine the common 
features leads to the detachment of the general from the 
particular. But this is successful only to a limited ex- 
tent. We are unable to think a pure general notion, for 
example the concept triangle, without imagining an 
equilateral, isosceles or irregular one, or a right, acute 
or obtuse triangle, represented by marks on paper or 
with crayon on the blackboard. The concrete features 
always intrude themselves. But we are able to perceive 
our psychical incapacity and to say, "all these particular 
forms are triangles, but none of them belongs to the gen- 
eral notion. I ought to be able to think three-sidedness 
without these particularities." 

The verification of the psychical general notion accord 
ing to extent and content, the detachment of the general 
notion from the individual, all this is in truth no longer 
the work of an unconscious psychical process, it is an effort 
and oftentimes a severe effort, requiring purpose and en- 
durance. 

And now we return to the proposition whose truth 
was put in question and give it more exact wording. 
The verified logical general notions are the, products of 
thinking. 

But the road along which thinking produces logical 
general notions, when closely surveyed, is not essentially 
different from that which leads to psychical concepts 
The psychical general notion presupposes a number of sim- 
ilar particular notions, and so also the logical concept — 
but while the psychical mechanism works up the acci- 
dentally collected particular ideas, without criticism, 
to a general notion, thinking first inquires whether the 
individual notions present to the mind all belong to the 



1?HE FORMAL STEPS. 187 

general notions and whether all the appropriate individ- 
ual notions are at hand (thinking sifts the extent of the 
general notion). 

By repeating the idea, the psychical mechanism 
strengthens the general characteristics; thinking does the 
same, but it lifts them through conscious and voluntary 
comparisons into notice and isolates them from the concrete, 
while it collects them together by themselves. (It de- 
fines the content of the general notion.) The work of 
thinking is similar in kind to that of the psychical 
mechanism, but it is more thorough. 

Application to Method. 

To teach a pupil to construct general notions is iden- 
tical with teaching him to think. But is he capable of 
thinking logical concepts, seeing that his teacher is 
unable to do it? We relinquish the claim at once. In 
elementary teaching the general notions will fall far 
behind the requirements of logic in more than one 
respect. Frequently it will be impossible to exhaust the 
extent that is, to bring together all the particular notions 
that belong to the concept. Then, of course, the content 
also can not be exact. So long as nothing has been said 
of the whale the pupil will assign to the general notion 
mammal the attribute of possessing four legs. Secondly, 
the child is much less able than the grown person to 
think a general notion abstractly. His imagination con- 
stantly rests upon concrete typical objects. 

But within the limits of those observations that are 
accessible to a child, instruction may follow the course of 
logical thinking and, thereby strengthen and hasten the 
mechanical process to which the child would otherwise 
remain subject. It will lead the pupil on to compare kin- 
dred things with purpose and attention, and to expressly 
collect the general characteristics. 



188 CtENERAL method. 

Comparison — gathering together the attributes of the 
general notion. This is the articulation of the process of 
abstraction in teaching. Perhaps it would be fitting to 
begin teaching by verifying and remodeling the numer- 
ous loose concepts which a child brings with him to 
school, and after this range of experience has been logic- 
ally reconstructed, to enrich his mind with new observa- 
tions (particular notions). But it is evident that this 
labor could not be accomplished in most cases without a 
return to the individual notions, because the single pict- 
ures, from which the general notion should have been 
drawn, are defective (as noticed above). But even if the 
quality of the individual notions permitted us to devote 
a longer time to their systematic arrangement, it would 
still not be permissible for another reason. The genera, 
notion offers no new material, its elements are all familiar, 
they are only to be differently grouped. But all instruc- 
tion that furnishes no new facts will very soon dull the 
interest and the desire to learn. Both considerations, 
therefore, are favorable to an alternation between the 
process of observing particulars and that of generaliza- 
tion. When new observations (of particulars) have been 
made, we see to their comparison among themselves and 
with kindred ideas already present and thus bring both 
the old and new into closer systematic order. With the 
new perception of a particular dog are associated the 
common points of agreement which the children have 
noticed in other dogs. There is formed a common pict- 
urCj^ composed of the attributes, qualities and habits 
peculiar to all dogs, which is more complete than the psy- 
chical. Subsequent instruction joins to this the study of 
the fox and wolf. But it does not stop with simple 
observation. There follows a comparison of the fox, 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 189 

wolf and dog. The outcome is reached by joining the 
points of similarity, namely of the canine family. If a 
later methodical unity treats the group, marten, pole-cat, 
weasel, sable, fish-otter, a comparison first gives the gen- 
eral notion of the marten family. By contrast it also 
emphasizes the two family notions — marten and canine. 

But above the contrast, the comparison recognizes a 
higher common attribute, the general notion of the flesh- 
eating animals. The comprehension of this general notion 
is expressed through a definition. The flesh-eaters have 
certain common marks, so and so. The flesh-eaters are 
the martins and the canines. They differ so and so from 
each other. If the study of the cat family follows this, 
the steps of preparation and presentation (analysis and 
synthesis) produce the individual notions house-cat, lynx, 
lion, tiger. The third step compares these species with 
each other, the family marks with those of the martens 
and canines and establishes the fact that the cat family 
also possess the characteristics of the order carnivora. 

The comparison of individual notions with respect to 
their common marks and the grouping together of the 
latter into a general notion pass imperceptibly from the 
one process to the other. The third step proceeds from 
the illustrations to the general notions (concept, rule, 
law). It is the course of induction. The fourth step 
proceeds in the opposite direction. The general idea 
indeed is to be detached from the individuals and so 
thrown into prominence, but it should not lose the con- 
crete ground on which it stands and therefore illustra- 
tions are subjoined — it is the systematic course of a 
scientific text-book (^. e. , first rule, then examples). The 
fourth step restores the relation between a school science 
and a professional science, and receives justly the name 



190 GENERAL METHOD. 

system. It is itself a detached part of a text-book, and 
where such is introduced (grammar, catechism, history- 
table or outline) it is fitting to refer to that portion of a 
scientific text-book which elaborates this topic, under- 
line it, and supplement it by the examples just learned. 
However insignificant this inversion may seem in a single 
case, still it is the necessary transition to that other 
mental movement of which the pupil shall be capable, 
according to Lessing: "to descend from the general to 
the particular after he has advanced from the particular 
to the general." 

Outwardly the fourth step is distinguished by enter- 
ing the results of the comparison in a note book, so far 
especially as one deems it important not to encourage 
forgetfulness, but desires to secure reliable supports for 
repetition. 

The process of observation and abstraction (first 
grasp of the whole, absorption, comparison and system) 
are the steps that lead to concepts or at least to what 
approximates abstract knowledge. But since observa- 
tions (individual notions) constitute the basis of the en- 
tire structure, since further a whole throng of particular 
ideas may fall under a single general notion, and every 
general notion be supported by at least several individual 
notions, it is plain that a greater amount of time must 
be expended upon the first two steps, which serve the 
purposes of observation, to correspond with their im- 
portance. When sufficient pains are taken in securing 
the individual notions of a dog, wolf, fox, marten, pole- 
cat, weasel, etc., the third and fourth steps will then 
require but little time. The family characteristics of the 
dog, marten, and cat may be soon grouped together and 
their kinship as carnivora may be established by a few 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 191 

statements relative to dentition and food. The process 
of abstraction proceeds more easily when the way to 
comparison has been paved during the process of observ- 
ing individual things. 

If similiarity and contrast promote the apperception 
of the new, they are also advantageous to the third step 
(comparison), which repeats again the general character- 
istics and the sub-class variations for the purpose of sys- 
tematic arrangement. Since the process of abstraction 
brings out nothing new, it is an advantage when we do 
not need to tarry long with the third and fourth steps. 

The families and orders are not the only categories 
that botanical instruction recognizes. Root, stem, leaf, 
inflorescence, environment, use, are also general notions 
which should be wrought out from the mass of concrete 
materials. They furnish new points of comparison for 
the third step, and in the fourth step (system) we sketch 
under the heading Root the different forms as they appear 
— as tap-root^ fihrous, tuberous, and near these sketches 
we write the names of the plants in which we have seen 
these forms illustrated. 

In such manner we arrange and secure our possession. 
To link thoughts together means to secure them against 
forgetfulness. Association of ideas is the condition of 
memory and the connexion according to inner kinship, 
its best support. The comparisons of the third step have 
no other aim. They are associations of individuals and 
lower concepts according to logical and essential char- 
acteristics. 

In many cases the process of abstraction ends with the 
association of individual notions and does not lead to the 
detachment of the general notion. Association must first 
collect the material for concept building. In getting at 



192 GENERAL METHOD. 

the rule for the doubling of consonants we lay in a cata- 
logue of words in 11^ nn, ck^ etc. , by reserving a column 
for each series. These associations develop the language 
instinct, for it depends upon the psychical mechanism. 
When the notion is at length ripe, we pluck it ; the 
reason for doubling the consonant is recognized, ck is 
seen to be equivalent to k k^ etc. Now the systematic 
order is reversed; we need no longer notice the whole 
extent; one illustration is enough. The general notion 
relieves, unloads the mind. In the fourth step, on the 
page devoted to spelling, we make a new entry. Douh. 
ling the final consonant^ example, telling, running, ticking. 

Whether we arrive at the logical concept or not, (and 
in elementary stages the latter will often be the case) the 
association that leads up to it should never be lacking in 
teaching. Everywhere the command is to collect and to 
collect according to logical categories. 

The association is not narrowed of course within the 
limits of a single study. For it is manifest that from the 
sum total of instruction the least will be lost when each 
study gathers up its own peculiar notions wherever they 
appear in the broad field of instruction. 

In instruction we desire to make the power expended 
by teachers and pupils as fruitful as possible; for this 
reason we are much concerned that the ideas be bound 
together and the associations themselves or their results 
(rule, concept) be fixed in writing. 

Pupils should be required to keep note-books of uni- 
form size in which the results of the lesson should be 
daily entered. This need not interfere with the proper 
use of text-books. ' ' We have some further remarks 
concerning the form of such entries. We have called them 
catch-words; they are not to give the whole matter but 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 193 

only to suggest it. Consequently we did not enter the 
rule for the doubling of the consonant, but only three 
examples: hitting^ running^ ticking. Had we done the 
opposite, there would be danger that the pupils would 
retain the rule and forget the examples. Then it would 
not be a rule but an empty formula. As soon as the 
general truth has lost its connexion with the concrete, it 
is a worthless shadow. 'Concepts without individual 
notions are empty.' We cling therefore to concrete 
types, to pattern-examples; but then we must also see 
to it that the pattern-examples retain their reproductive 
power, that is, we must associate example and rule. We 
should require the pupil therefore while looking at the 
example to construct and reproduce the rule, e. g.^ "A 
final consonant, preceded by a single vowel, doubles the 
consonant^ when — etc." 

In one form or another the entries of the fourth step 
contain the child's system of knowledge. Perhaps the 
significance of the proposition has now grown clearer, we 
are not obliged to offer a ready system, but to let one 
spring up gradually. The text-book contains the whole 
system, the note-book with its catch-words, the pupil's 
arrangement of his concrete circle of observation. 

In the scientific text-book stands the complete logical 
concept; a psychological instruction allows it to ripen. 
The first entries often lift themselves but little above the 
loose psychical concept, they are only associations. The 
number of associations is, at first, limited, consequently 
the concept contains attributes that must later be ex- 
cluded. (The idea that mammals are all quadrupeds.) 

The systematic course is determined by the logical 
relation of general notions ; it treats exhaustively the 
forms of leaves, simple and compound ; it advances to the 



194 GENERAL METHOD. 

inflorescence, cluster, spike, umbel, head, then follow the 
forms of flower, fruit, etc. It is similar to the catechet- 
ical teaching of the clergy. According to the logical suc- 
cession of topics in which the subject matter is arranged 
in a system, it is treated from the beginning ; the sys- 
tematic order is already contained in the course of instruc- 
tion. A school science, on the other hand, is distinguished 
from a professional science in this, that its course is de- 
termined by other considerations. It is influenced by 
psychological motives. It follows the zigzags and leaps 
of a natural interest, which pursues phenomena within 
the circle of experience, the seasons with their fauna and 
flora, their field labor and games, or the impulses of 
other contemporary studies. From domestic animals to 
the plants that serve them as food, from cud-chewing 
animals to milk and its products, from the cream on the 
surface to specific gravity. With the explorers to India 
and America, with the Crusaders into the Holy Land, 
with Charlemagne from the Weser to the Ebro, and from 
Lombardy to the valleys of the north. Religious teaching 
finds to-day examples of philanthropy and patriotism, to- 
morrow of peace-making, energy of will, fidelity, faith in 
Grod, and again a reason for faith in the divine order of 
the world. 

But the associations and the entries (in the note book), 
bring everything to its proper place, so that finally in 
every study the structure stands complete, the catechism, 
the system of geography, of natural history, etc. ; or at 
least it has been developed and has been so rooted in the 
concrete that the pupil can support the further burden of 
systematic arrangement for the sake of supplementing 
* and rounding out his knowledge (catechism river sys- 
tem, the forms of the strong conjugation, local home his- 
tory, history of literature, etc.)* 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 195 

The system of professional science, at least an ap- 
proximation to it in respect to both quality and quantity, 
is the logical aim of teaching. A course of study, which, 
although it constantly follows interest, still exhausts 
gradually all the chief topics of the subject in a degree 
suitable to an elementary school, is the psychological way 
to the aim. But this road is not yet built. Its survey 
and construction are labors which demand the services 
alike of the student of method and of the scientific spec- 
ialist. For the problem involves the double duty of being 
just to the scientific subject matter and to the psycho- 
logical spirit. 

To recapitulate — The logical elaboration of the sub- 
ject matter is accomplished in two steps. Association ties 
together similar things for the sake of securing intellect- 
ual centres, and particularly to pave the way for the 
derivation of concepts. System {generalizatio?i) gives to 
the results of association their scientific (systematic) form 
and fixes them by corresponding entries in the note-book. 

Application ; From Knowledge to Practical Power. 

We do not wish for a dead knowledge. The meaning of 
this expression is clear; knowledge with which you can 
undertake nothing, which lies like an inorganic substance 
in the mind, which sets up no objective aims, and presses 
to no application. We desire a knowledge that produces 
shoots like a plant, grows from within outward, gener- 
ates interests, a productive, or as it has been fittingly 
called, a living knowledge. According to its capacity to 
increase the mental power and self-activity of the pupil 
must the educative value of a method also be measured. 
Instruction therefore must beget a logically well-ordered 
and productive knowledge. 



196 GENERAL METHOD. 

This is perhaps only a new term for an old thougnt; 
instruction should produce not simply knowledge but 
power. But there may be a doubt as to the identy of the 
two notions. If, as happens now and then, under potver 
is understood skill in the arts of reading, writing, draw- 
ing and singing, and to some branches is attributed the 
cultivation of knowledge, to others the training of power, 
we cannot subscribe to it. Pestalozzi requires that 
knowledge and power shall stand related to each other as 
fountain and stream. This points then to the unity of 
the subject matter for knowledge and skill. If one will 
formulate the statement as follows, that the aim of in- 
struction is a knowledge in which power takes root, Pesta- 
lozzi's idea may be correctly reproduced. 

Under power we do not understand a physical or man- 
ual skill. All knowledge must be translated into power, 
this means nothing else than that knowledge must be 
changed into skill, must stand ready for service where- 
ever and whenever it is needed. A beginner on the vio- 
lin may be able to play the scale correctly, but he does 
not play it with smoothness and perfection. At every 
trial he must give painful heed to the correct position of 
the arm and hand and the use of the right finger and 
string. The ready player thinks nothing about these 
things. He scarcely has the purpose of strinking the 
tone a, for the requisite muscular movements are per- 
formed almost involuntarily. In time he comes to the 
execution of a whole scale or piece of music in this man- 
ner. The means that have brought him to this we call 
practice. Practice transformes knowledge into power. 
Repetition makes the mental movement so fluent and sure 
and binds the links of the series so firmly, that they run 
off without check and almost unconsciously whenever an 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 197 

impulse of the will sets them in motion. This is strik- 
ingly true in arithmetical operations. Drill secures to the 
book-keeper the same skilled routine in the complicated 
processes of reckoning interest, compound interest, etc. 
But just as these operations in the earlier steps of fixing 
the individual and general notions have stood with great 
distinctiveness before the mind, with respect to the suc- 
cession of their parts and the proofs in detail, so the 
skilled reckoner can recall them to mind in the fifth step 
(skill), if required to give an account of his action. His 
skill rests upon insight. Through the intelligence to 
skilled routine. This is the power which the fifth step 
may not indeed bring to perfection but can pave the w^y 
to. Thence the universally recognized necessity of drill 
exercises in arithmetic and language. By combination 
with previous knowledge these exercises become at once 
incidental (immanent) repetitions. By these associations 
drill receives a new element of increased incentive to in- 
terest. Besides this, the full and facile use of what has 
been learned is thereby promoted. Toward a free dis- 
position and use of knowledge, association and systematic 
arrangement have already contributed. But while it 
was there only incidentally furthered, it is the chief aim 
of the fifth step. Knowledge is not freely serviceable so 
long as it remains constrained within the series in which 
it was first learned. Themes must be appointed which 
train the pupil to release the elements of his knowledge 
from their old connexions and to combine them into new 
forms. The order in which knowledge stands must be 
changed. * 

It is natural that these exercises are easily discharged 
when the pupil commands only a narrow field. But in 
the degree to which his knowledge expands, the demands 
upon his original productive power are increased. 



198 GENERAL METHOD. 

Instruction in literature in higher schools leads to the 
elaboration of such themes as "The wonderful in poetry," 
"The estimation set on friendship by our great poets," 
etc. 

Instruction must also sharpen the pupil's power of 
discernment and judgment. To bring this to a test and 
to establish it is the function of the fifth step. For 
instance, a new sound has been learned in a type word; 
it is to be recognized by the pupil in a new word. 

Finally we have a particular sort of application to 
emphasize, namely, the preparation for the pupil's prac- 
tical conduct. He should be gradually led to apply to 
hi^ individual circumstances the maxims of morality and 
practical wisdom which he has drawn from religious, his- 
torical and poetical materials. From examples of neigh- 
borly good-will, of generosity, of social temper and 
patriotism we turn to the injunction, "Go, do thou like- 
wise." 

Through the fancy the child should put himself in 
positions where he may exercise these maxims. In 
thought he should often see himself acting according to 
these principles. In every such case the fancy creates 
associations between concrete situations and the maxims 
applicable to them; the more firm and numerous these 
associations, the greater is the surety that the principles 
appropriated have been turned into flesh and blood, and 
work unconsciously. Thus there is developed, analogous 
to the skill in reckoning, a skill in conduct — tact. 

To be sure the perfection of tact is only to be attained 
in the stream of the world, but in the quiet of the school 
and in the domestic circle this talent must be cultivated. 
The principles of conduct must be as familiar to the pupil 
as the four fundamental operations in arithmetic. What 



THE FORMAL STEPS. 199 

was said there in favor of mathematical dexterity must 
be repeated here in favor of tact. We are able at any 
moment to think clearly only a limited number of ideas. 
But in conduct, a person, at every turn, has a multitude 
of things to consider. If one were compelled to think 
each thing clearly and definitely, he would come to a halt 
at every step or he would advance rashly to action and 
overlook this or that. Drill must perform the same 
function in this case as with the arithmetician ; the asso- 
ciation must see to it that ideas which have become 
unconscious shall still affect the determinations of the 
will in the form of feeling (instinct). 

The same is true of pedagogical tact. Who could 
remain clearly conscious of methodical rules during every 
moment of instruction ? What would be the outcome if 
one were compelled at every step to make sure of his sci- 
entific bearings ? Yet tact cannot be taught directly, 
but only by indirect means. Pedagogical principles in 
the first place must be brought clearly before the mind; 
the preparation for the following lesson should keep in 
view all possible contingencies and bring them under the 
correct general notions ; the teacher, just beginning, 
must see himself in thought working before his class. 
After this he proceeds to action ; criticism supplements 
the defects that appear and strengthens the associations, 
and drill finally insures their effectiveness even when they 
remain below the line of consciousness. 

However different the fields of labor may be, all the 
forms of rational tact have this feature in common with 
the skill of the arithmetician ; they work unconsciously 
but all their elements have taken the road through con- 
sciousness and can be re-called to it at any moment. 



300 GENERAL METHOD. 

From knowledge to power therefore means the same 
as from knowledge to skill, to tact. Since our momen- 
tary consciousness is so narrow, we must see to it that 
the ideas, when once excluded from it, are not entirely 
lost, but, as it were, stand on picket and remain acces- 
sible to every hint. But even beyond our consciousness 
their reflex influence upon our conduct must be percept- 
ible. They must conduct themselves like troops, only a 
part of whom are drawn under fire (consciousness); but 
in spite of their covert position they constitute the basis 
of operations for their comrades. 



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